


Your Heart Was Beating Too Fast

by whatdoidowiththisthingnow



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Kids AU, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2018-12-31 00:01:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12120162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatdoidowiththisthingnow/pseuds/whatdoidowiththisthingnow
Summary: Kids AU one-shots feat. Sanvers & Supercorp.These were previously Ch. 7, 11 & 12 in "Dive" but I'm going to put them here separately, so they're easier to find, and just in case any new chapters are written.





	1. In Which the Danvers Sisters are Both The Fun Parent...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This started out from a prompt during Danvers Sisters Week. Feat. Danvers Sisters, Sanvers, Supercorp, and a lot of kiddos. :)

Lena pushes open the door of Noonan’s and holds it for Maggie behind her, “I just have a bad feeling about what we’re going to find when we return…”

Maggie sips her coffee, and they walk side-by-side down the street, “Let’s just enjoy the movie, ok? The kids are fine. They all have a parent present.”

Lena arches an eyebrow Maggie’s way, “You realize they all have the fun parent present, right?”

Maggie stops in her tracks, and Lena waits, “Have we really never left the kids with only the Danvers sisters?”

Lena winces, “In the past three years, I can’t actually think of any other time.”

Maggie thinks harder, “There had to be at least one…”

“Not since my kids were born.”

“What about—no, Lucy was there that day…” Maggie rubs her forehead, “There has to be  _one_.”

Lena shakes her head, “I really don’t think there is.”

Maggie smirks, “Well apparently we need to hang out more often.”

“We do,” Lena laughs, “but that might be a secondary problem.”

“So we’re skipping the movie?” Maggie frowns.

They stare between each other, not really _concerned_ about the kids, but…well, maybe a little concerned. Especially with how much junk food and trouble five kids and two fully grown kids in the form of Kara and Alex can get into in two hours.

They come to the same conclusion, “ _Nahh_ …they’ll be fine.”

…

Two hours later, they maybe regret that decision.

Lena opens the door to her and Kara’s apartment and it’s pitch black and nearly silent, except for some running and clatter coming from the end of the hall.

“What the—” she reaches for the light switch but a small hand suddenly grabs her arm and yanks her down to the floor.

_“Shhhhh!”_

Maggie kneels beside Lena and tugs the skinny little eight-year-old close her chest, “Gertie…what’s going on?”

Two very big, very serious, brown eyes look up at her through a mop of dark, messy curls, and Maggie melts. To anyone else, this kid is her clone, but she doesn’t really see it—she only sees the best thing her and Alex ever did. The first best thing, at least…tied with the other best things they repeated two more times just a few years later.

“I’m taking down Cadmus,” she says like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Then adds pointedly, “But Auntie Lena is going to blow my cover.”

Maggie has to bite her lip not to laugh at the words out of her eldest’s mouth. Lena looks away, burying her face in her shoulder until she can stop laughing.

“Auntie Lenaaaa! You’re going to ruin everything!”

Maggie straightens out her pink, unicorn-covered pajamas that make her look so tiny, and so absurdly adorable. When she picked them out last week, Alex whispered in Maggie’s ear, “I hope she never grows up,” and Maggie had to agree.

Lena composes herself and apologizes to her niece, “I’m sorry, love. I’m _sorry_. I’ll be quiet.”

Maggie now realizes she’s holding a toy sword.

“You’re taking down Cadmus with a sword? I feel like you might need some bigger guns, jellybean.”

Gertie looks down, disappointed, her curls falling into her face, “I know,” she pouts. “I had a bigger gun, but the Cadmus Agents blew it up. So now all I have is a sword.”

Maggie spins her around and pulls a hair tie from her wrist, wrangling the curls into a messy bun on top of her head, “I see…Well it’ll be more difficult, but it’s certainly not impossible.”

Gertie grins, and yep…there’s the dimples. Maggie’s heart could explode.

Lena asks the question they probably should’ve started with, “G, where is everybody else?”

She sighs dramatically, and her free hand goes to her hip, “Lainey is over there—” she points toward the kitchen with her sword, “She’s waiting for my count so we can raid Cadmus. Auntie Kara is with her because she’s in charge of giving her superpowers.”

Maggie and Lena exchange a look, but quickly have to look away because their going to make each other laugh—and then they’re going to get yelled at.

“Mama is with Maddie and Audrey, because they’re Cadmus Agents—” Lena’s brow furrows at the declaration that her twin toddlers are Cadmus Agents, but she doesn’t say anything, “—and she’s in charge of giving _them_ superpowers.” She thinks on that, “Although, their powers keep changing. I think that’s cheating.”

Maggie agrees, that’s kind of cheating—but she’ll save it for later, “And where’s your brother?”

“He’s the head of Cadmus.”

Maggie shakes her head, “Of course he is,” and Lena smirks. JJ is a particularly precocious five-year-old, and in more ways than one, the spitting image of Alex—but with somehow nearly twice her smarts. Until he came along, Maggie wasn’t even sure that was a level of intelligence a human could possess.

Gertie frowns, “Can I go play now?”

Maggie plants a kiss on her cheek that her daughter quickly wipes off, and pats her on the butt, “Go save the world.”

She grins and then gets very serious, “Don’t. Move.”

Maggie puts her hands up and Lena makes an “x” on her chest with her finger, “Promise.”

Their eyes now better adjusted to the dark, they stand near the door and watch the whole thing unfold.

Gertie slides under the kitchen table, and emerges seconds later with what they can only assume is her little sister and Kara, a few steps behind.

Kara winks at Lena, then scoops up her littlest niece, making her “fly” down the hallway by Gertie’s side.

Seconds later, there are screams and giggles and yelps—and more than one crash coming from down the hall.

The hall light flips on, and Lena figures it’s safe to turn the rest of the lights on as well.

She probably should’ve left them off.

The apartment is chaos. The kitchen table is littered with pizza boxes and half-empty chocolate milk cups, and a what appears to be multiple packages of half-eaten cotton candy and melted ice cream.

All the pillows and couch cushions in the living room are on the floor and piled into what was maybe a fort at one point, but definitely was no longer a safe structure.

Dolls and action figures and capes and trucks and stuffed animals and multiple pieces of children’s clothing are flung just about everywhere—and while it’s often the look of Lena and Kara’s apartment now that their twin daughters are three-years-old, it’s also amplified by the three other tiny humans currently running amok down the hall.

Lena trips over a race car, and Maggie lunges to grab her arm before she falls, and a stuffed alligator falls from the ceiling and lands between them. They exchange a look of sheer bewilderment and glance up to see a stuffed monkey, a baby doll, and a toy helicopter balancing on the stilled blades of the ceiling fan.

Lena squints, “Ok, but _how_ …?”

Maggie snorts and shakes her head, “I don’t even want to know.”

Suddenly a five-year-old boy with a similar head of dark curls—though a fairer complexion than Gertie— runs toward them, screaming and wielding a four-foot stuffed snake like a lasso. He’s completely naked, except for his tiny Mickey Mouse boxer briefs and the plastic Guardian mask on his face.

At his heels—in her Flash pajamas and clutching a stuffed shark almost as big as she is—is a wild six-year-old, with straight blonde hair and bright blue eyes that resemble neither of her mothers (she definitely got those from her grandmothers), but in the most adorable twist of fate, makes her look strikingly similar to her Aunt Kara that she shares exactly zero DNA with.

Gertie is a step behind, sword high in the air, also screaming.

He scrambles over the back of the couch, but his sisters are older and stronger and faster. Lainey throws the shark over the couch before clambering over yelling, “King Shark attack!” and Gertie’s over it a second later, both of them landing right on top of him, pinning him down.

“We beat Cadmus!” Gertie screams.

The three of them wrestle and start throwing pillows and couch cushions at each other. And at anyone else’s house, Maggie would make them stop—or, oh god…she hopes they wouldn’t even start—but here is also home, and she knows it’s fine.

Alex jogs up to her from the hall, laughing, and pulls Maggie into her arms with a kiss, “Hiya.”

Maggie hangs on to that kiss just a little longer than is probably appropriate, but all three kids are occupied, and she relishes in that fact. She brushes a piece of Alex’s hair away from her face with a crooked grin, “So…uh…what’s going on here, babe?”

Alex blushes and giggles and kisses her again, and Maggie quickly forgets her question.

A second later, Kara appears with a blonde-haired, green-eyed, squirming mass in her arms, an identical looking toddler at her heels, and the biggest grin on her face, “How was the movie?!”

Lena greets her with a kiss, “Good,” and hugs them both tight, squeezing the little toddler between them, “I missed you, my Madeleine.” The little girl grabs her neck, and Lena takes her from Kara and spins her around, making her giggle.

Her twin runs right into Maggie’s shins, and Maggie scoops her up and tosses her into the air, “Hey, buttercup!” before landing her on her hip.

Lena rubs something off Kara’s forehead that looks curiously like cotton candy, not even about to ask how it got there, but raises her eyebrows, “You made our daughters Cadmus Agents?”

Kara looks to Audrey at Maggie’s hip, who is now reaching both arms out to her. She grabs her and effortlessly flips her upside down, holding her by her ankles as she giggles and shrieks in delight, “They’re three, sweetheart. Destruction is what they do best.”

Lena can’t argue with that—although she wonders how much of the destruction was from the kids and how much was from the Danvers sisters.

Maggie shares a look that tells her she’s thinking the same thing, and they laugh.

Alex squints, “What’s that look for?” but Maggie only shakes her head.

Kara glares at Lena, “Something you’d like to share?”

Both twins are demanding to be put down, and Kara and Lena lower them to the floor, neither breaking eye contact, “Nope. Nothing.”

She grabs Lena by the waist and pulls her close, “I don’t believe you…” and Lena blushes.

Then there’s a loud _THWACK_ from the living room, and all four adults spin around.

JJ is now buried under a pile of pillows, squirming, yelling, “Let me go!”

Both of his sisters roll off the pile giggling, and he huffs as he stands, crossing his arms and sticking out his tongue, “No fair! Two against one.”

Lainey throws a pillow at him, but he ducks it easily, “It was three against two, dummy. Don’t be a sore loser.”

“ _You’re_ the dummy! Maddie and Audrey aren’t even playing anymore!”

Alex opens her mouth to intervene, but Gertie does it for her, albeit with slightly less composure, whacking the couch cushions with the toy sword, “Hey! No name-calling!”

Lainey and JJ sigh, mumbling, “Sorry...” in near unison.

Then Lainey’s demeanor changes instantly. She hops up on the couch with a grin, fist raised in victory, and pulls Gertie up with her, shouting and dancing around, “Badass Danvers sistersssss!”

Kara chokes, Lena bursts out laughing, and Alex and Maggie’s jaws drop.

Instantly Maggie smacks both Kara and Alex in the arm, glaring between them, “Oh my _God_ —”

“We didn’t teach them that!” they cry in unison. Lena’s not even trying to stifle her laughter, and Maggie doesn’t take her eyes off the Danvers sisters in front of her, even as she yells, “Elena Elizabeth Danvers! What did you just say young lady?!”

Lainey’s face drops and she turns slowly, sheepishly toward her mothers, pleading, “I—I didn’t…Gertie said it first!”

Now Maggie looks. Gertie scoffs, “Nuh-uh!” she points at her brother, “It was Jeremiah!”

Alex and Maggie’s eyes dart between all three of their guilty as hell children, and Lena and Kara usher their toddlers into the kitchen, failing completely at acting like adults.

They approach their three kids, now lined up on the couch, and Alex looks at her youngest, “Is that true, young man?”

He stares at her, chewing the inside of his cheek, and Maggie has to look away because he looks exactly like Alex right now and she’s ready to cave. Alex lifts his chin, her voice firm, but kind, “Buddy, where did you hear that word?”

He shrugs, “Uncle Winn said it to Uncle Jimmy last week. It sounded like a good thing.”

Alex bites back a smile, “That is not a word for kids, sir. I don’t want to hear you say it again.”

He nods, “Yes, mommy.”

She kisses him on the cheek and brushes his hair back, “I love you, bud.”

She turns to her daughters, now bouncing on the couch in their pajamas, “That goes for both of you girls, too.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they sing in unison.

The kids go back to playing in the living room, and Kara reappears over Alex’s shoulder, looking at them with a grin, “It wasn’t incorrect though…”

Maggie smacks her in the arm again, and she winces even though they both know it didn’t hurt. “Remember that every bad thing you teach our children is coming back to you just a few years later, kid.”

Kara laughs, “At what point am I old enough to not be called ‘kid’ anymore?”

And at that, Maggie hugs her tight, “Never, Little Danvers. Not ever.”

Kara beams, “I can accept that.”

She lets go and leans against Alex’s shoulder, “We should get these kids home and to bed, Ally.”

And three voices ring out in various whines of “Nooo!” and “Mama you _promised!”_ and “That’s not fair!”

She glances up slowly, and Alex looks about as guilty as her children did only moments ago, “Um...about that…”

Kara takes her sister’s hand and pulls her toward the kitchen, giggling, “Sleepover night! Hot chocolate and marshmallows and camping on the roof!”

All the kids scream and run toward Lena, who Maggie now realizes has been preparing multiple mugs of hot chocolate in the kitchen. Alex shrugs apologetically as she’s being dragged away, and Maggie can’t help but grin.

The kids follow Alex and Kara up the stairs like little ducklings, and Maggie grabs her son’s pajamas that she now sees lying on the kitchen counter. She looks to Lena, “Badass Danvers sisters, huh?”

Lena hands her a mug of hot chocolate, and they follow the train of kids up the stairs toward the roof, “Definitely badass.” But her voice turns more thoughtful, “All the things they do—and they’ve seen—and they still giggle and chase babies and get excited over hot chocolate and marshmallows and mesmerized by the stars.”

Now halfway up the stairs, Maggie has to stop and wipe her eyes with the back of her hand, “ _Jesus_ , Len. Why would you do that to me?”

Lena laughs lightly and ducks through the door where the rest of her family is waiting.

Maggie steps through a second later, leaning against the door for a minute to take in the sight in front of her.

Kara is stretched out on the outdoor, L-shaped couch, piles of pillows and blankets on the ground, and a now-sleeping Audrey in her arms, tucked under her chin. Lena squeezes on one side of her, kissing both her wife and their daughter in turn. And Alex is sitting on her other side, their middle child wrapped tightly in her arms on her lap.

JJ and Gertie are at the far edge of the roof, each with one of little Maddie’s hands in their own, taking turns looking through the telescope and pointing out the different constellations they know—and giggling every time Maddie incorrectly repeats one in her adorable, three-year-old babble.

“Buddy,” she calls. He turns and she tosses his pajamas. They land on his face, and he giggles, “Put these on, my nakkie baby.”

He rolls his eyes, “ _Mama_ , I’m not a baby.”

“I know. But you’ll always be _my_ baby,” she blows him a kiss.

He sighs, but she sees the small smile as he pulls on his dinosaur pajamas.

She takes a seat next to Alex, and Lainey crawls into her lap, burrowing as close as she can to Maggie’s chest. She instantly wraps the tiny, slightly shaking frame in her arms. Maggie and Alex exchange a frown, because their little hurricane—their little pistol who always leaps and never looks—is also deathly afraid of heights, and equally adamant about not being left out.

She’s fine with the height of the monkey bars and the top of the slide at the park, and also apparently, with the jump from the sixth stair that just last week she declared was “A new record!” in how far she could leap in a single bound. 

And she was fine with a piggyback ride, but utterly inconsolable the one—and only—time James tried to put her on his shoulders (and James covered it well, but Maggie and Alex made sure to reassure him later, because he was very nearly inconsolable too).

They rarely knew where the line that she couldn’t cross was until it was right in front of them, but they both knew the roof was well beyond that line.

And they’re working at it, and she’s getting better—but it’s tough when your aunt and uncle can fly, and your brother and sister are obsessed with the stars, and your grandparents are martians, and your little cousins will probably be able to fly too—although neither Lena and Kara, nor Alex and Eliza, can figure out if or when that will happen.

Gertie comes running up to them, nearly toppling over the table of hot chocolate, before Alex steadies her, “Slow down there, munchkin.”

“Sorry!” she giggles. But then her whole disposition changes and she takes a couple slow steps up to her sister, getting close to her face. She tugs the blanket away from her sister’s chin gently, and her dimples flash when she gives her a little head tilt—and Alex swears her heart stops.

“Lainey?” she whispers.

Her sister doesn’t answer, but is watching her attentively.

“We just found Saturn through the telescope! And I…I know that’s your favorite. So…I just thought…do you want to come look at it?”

Maggie watches the internal struggle of her six-year-old play across her face and feels her little body tense. But to her and Alex’s surprise, Lainey slides off Maggie’s lap and takes her sisters hand, and Gertie smiles, and slowly, carefully, leads her baby sister toward the telescope.

Two steps later, Maggie realizes Lainey’s other hand is still tightly clutching a fistful of her shirt, and those big blue eyes look up at her, demanding her to come with them. She happily complies.

Alex picks up the discarded blanket, throws it over her lap, and leans into Kara’s side, watching her girls walk to the other side of the roof.

When they get to the edge, Lainey stops at the little step she needs to stand on to see into the telescope, but Gertie puts two careful and solid arms around her waist, and her little sister grips her shoulder tight as she steps up—one hand still clutching Maggie’s shirt.

She looks down her big sister, terrified, but Gertie nods supportively, “It’s ok. I got you.”

And Maggie’s hand flies to her mouth, but still isn’t quicker than the tears in her eyes. And the sob she hears behind her breaks her heart, because she knows it belongs to Alex. But this one tiny hand is still clutching her shirt, and she wouldn’t dare leave her daughter’s side, but at the same time it’s killing her not to be able to get to her crying wife right now.

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath before twisting until she can see Alex over her shoulder, but Kara’s already got her free arm around Alex, whispering over and over, as tears stream down her sister’s cheeks, “I got you, Alex. I got you.”

And to their left, Lena is staring up at her. She winks at Maggie, then mouths, “Badass sisters.”

And she’s probably talking about Alex and Kara, but she could be talking about Gertie and Lainey, and Maggie’s pretty sure in a few years, it’ll be about Audrey and Maddie.

And Maggie grins through her tears.

Badass sisters, indeed.


	2. Christmas Magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is it too early to talk about Christmas? (Spoiler alert: not here it isn’t!)
> 
> Aaaand, as is my way, nothing really happens, there’s very little plot, but everyone hangs out and has a cuddly, fluffy Christmas. (Sorry, I’ve started to just embrace it at this point. Lol.)
> 
> It’s also very long. I really tried (and really failed) to make it shorter, and at some point just gave up and kept going until there was an end.
> 
> Happy reading! :) Feat. Sanvers and Supercorp and sisters and Christmas still a lot of kids, y’all.

 

They had a lot of traditions in the Super Family, and the last few months of the year were a whirlwind of chaos and celebration.

Halloween is J’onn and M’gann’s.

Without fail, every one of his Earth kids (and now grandkids) has fallen prey to one of his pranks—and by now they know it’s coming, but he still manages to pull it off. And every one of them loves the one day a year when everyone else at the DEO gets a glimpse of the Space Dad side of J’onn—even if they’re sure to never mention it ever again.

Thanksgiving is Kara’s.

Because all Kara ever wanted was a family, and that’s what their Thanksgiving is all about. It’s endless amounts of food, and chocolate pecan pie, and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons, and after-dinner snuggles, and the whole family together under one roof for the whole day.

Hanukkah is Alex’s.

Those traditions run deep in her veins, and go back to a time before Kara. A quieter, simpler time with just her and Eliza and Jeremiah. Of course, it’s since included her sister—and then her wife, and their friends, and now her sister-in-law, and all their combined children—and she couldn’t be happier about it.

New Year’s Eve is Lena’s.

No one throws a gala quite like she does. She relishes having this one night a year when the adults can be adults, and they all get dressed to the nines and dance and drink and flirt a little more than they would in front of the tiny eyeballs that demand all their attention. It also helps that she knows, every single year, her wife makes it her mission to find an outfit that makes her jaw drop and her heart skip a beat—although Kara would tell you the exact same story.

Christmas is Maggie’s.

She had shed a lot of the religious aspects of the holiday (though the religious upbringing occasionally showed itself—and sometimes she liked it, and sometimes she didn’t), but the magic…the magic of Christmas had stayed with her even after all these years. There were some traditions you couldn’t shake, and despite the few years where she’d hated the holiday, most of her memories of it were full of family and snowmen and baking and cheesy movies—and that was what she wanted to give her kids, and her whole family.

…

On Christmas Eve, Kara, Lena, and their twin three-year-olds, Audrey and Maddie, pack up to spend the night and all of Christmas Day at Alex and Maggie’s house.

As soon as they open the front door, their blonde-haired, green-eyed little girls take off at a sprint to seek out their cousins. Audrey finds Gertie first—reading a book in the living room—and climbs right onto the eight-year-old’s lap. Gertie’s big brown eyes go wide, and her long, dark curls cover her face when she hugs her little cousin tight.

Maddie takes off down the hallway, while JJ and Lainey come barreling down the stairs in the middle of a sword fight—and if you looked quick enough, you’d think it was a tiny version of Alex and Kara.

Five-year-old JJ’s short, dark hair is similar to Gertie’s, but he’s got Alex’s fair skin and he doesn’t have the dimples that both his sister’s share. Lainey is an enigma—their fiery six-year-old has blonde hair and blue eyes. And although genetically, it’s probably due to her grandmothers, Kara takes full credit whenever she can.

“Hey!” Maggie greets them from the kitchen, where she’s currently mixing up no less than 10 different colors of icing. “Alex is…” she knits her eyebrows, “Uh…I don’t actually know. She’s somewhere though,” she laughs.

“Alex is right here,” comes a voice from behind them. She wraps up her sister and then her sister-in-law in hugs before Maddie runs right into the back of her knees. She picks up her niece and tosses her in the air as she giggles, then places her on her hip, “You wanna decorate cookies, Maddie?”

“Cookie!” she screams—and that gets all the kids attention. They come barreling through the house toward Maggie in the kitchen.

“Whoa, whoa, easy kiddos.” They slow down a little, but still scramble up into chairs, already digging through a pile of cookie cutters before she even takes the cookie dough out of the fridge.

Maggie has spent the last two days baking. It started with her grandmother’s almond cake, then her mom’s thumbprint cookies—both black raspberry and apricot. Then she made stacks of vanilla pizzelles. She made Alex’s favorite chocolate peanut butter buckeyes. She made dark chocolate peppermint cookies for Winn, and white chocolate cranberry cookies for J’onn and Lena, and chocolate pecan pie cookies for Kara, and—thankfully—James’ favorite are the cookies the kids are about to bake now.

And that’s what the kids spend the next couple hours doing. It’s a few hours of cookie cutters and icing and sprinkles—and then every kid needs a bath to get the icing off of their hands, their faces, their hair.

It’s followed by cookie-filled kids on the verge of bellyaches, and one small fight over which Christmas movie they’re going to watch before bed.

“The Grinch!” JJ shouts.

“No, Elf!” Gertie insists.

“Miracle on 34th Street!”

“If you don’t work it out before your cousins get downstairs, you’re not watching anything,” Alex warns.

The bargaining begins.

“Ok, but we already watched Elf last week, Gertie.”

“Fiiine,” she resigns. Then looks to her brother, “Last year we tried to watch The Grinch and Audrey and Maddie cried.”

“Oh yeah,” JJ frowns.

They both look at Lainey, and she suddenly buckles under the attention, “I mean…we don’t have to watch this one if you don’t want to. It’s just my favorite.”

JJ shrugs, “It’s fine.”

Gertie takes it gently from her hands, “It’s a good one, Lainey. Let’s watch it.”

…

Before the movie though, there’s one special present they get to open—a gift they get every year.

It started as a joke when Gertie was born. Winn made her a tiny reindeer onesie for her first Christmas, complete with antlers and a little red nose on the hood—and they _loved_ it. So she got a snowman one for her second Christmas. And by her third Christmas, baby Elena wore the reindeer hand-me-down, and Gertie was a tiny Santa Claus.

They’ve since moved on from holiday themes and into whatever the kids ask for.

Lena pulls five identically-wrapped boxes out from under the Christmas tree as the kids sit eagerly around her. Maggie is behind the kids on the couch, and Alex is on Kara’s lap in the armchair near the fireplace.

“You guys ready?”

The loud screams tell her they are, in fact, ready.

“Ok, ok…quietly. Sheesh.” The kids just giggle.

She hands them each the shirt-sized boxes and watches as they all try hard not to tear it to pieces as soon as it touches their hands.

They look at her with wide, eager eyes, and she laughs, “Well go ahead, open them up!”

She kneels next to her daughters on the floor and helps them with the ribbons—though they don’t really need help getting through the rest of the packaging.

JJ’s first, “Yesss!” He holds up a soft, dark brown onesie that, once he puts it on, is going to make him look like a little bear.

Maggie and Alex exchange smirks, and Kara glances between them with confusion. She whispers to Alex, “A bear?”

Alex laughs, “That’s what he asked for.”

Their insanely intelligent little boy—who loves and knows about and is obsessed with everything and anything to do with space and dinosaurs and physics—asked for bear pajamas this year over any other kind. She and Maggie had no clue where it came from, or the reasoning behind it—he’d never shown a particular interest in bears before—but he was sure of his decision.

Lainey holds up a dragon one. It’s midnight blue with dark, shimmery wings, and orange horns and bumps along the tail. She’s stripped down to her underwear before either Maggie or Alex had a chance to stop her, and zips it up moments later, flying directly into Maggie’s lap and hugging her neck tight.

Maggie laughs, “So you like it?”

She is beside herself. She stands on the couch cushion next to Maggie and pulls the hood on, jumping up and down, “I love it!”

Lainey rolls off the couch and runs to Alex, hugging her tight too, “I love it, Mama. Thank you.”

Alex holds her tight and kisses her cheek, “I love _you_ , my little Lainey-bug. And you remember that thank you tomorrow when you see your Uncle Winn.”

“I will!” she runs over to sit by her sister.

Gertie’s is a greyish-white with black spots, cat ears, and a long tail tipped with black. She beams, “A snow leopard!”

It’s incredible and perfect, and Maggie’s eyebrows raise at the sight of it. Alex nudges Kara, “Ok, seriously, how does he do it?”

Kara shakes her head, “I have _no_ idea.”

“I always feel bad when the kids ask for something obscure, but _wow_ , he delivers.”

“Be sure to mention that to him tomorrow.”

Alex is still stunned, “I definitely will.”

Lena finishes zipping up Audrey and Maddie and whispers in their ears. They take off running toward Kara, and Alex hops off her lap just in time for her nieces to pummel their mama. Audrey’s a little tan bunny, and Maddie’s a white fluffy lamb.

Kara hugs them tight and squeals, “Oh my god—honey, they’re never taking these off. Not ever.”

Lena walks over and picks up their little bunny and takes her place on Kara’s lap, with both of their girls cuddled close.

Maggie snaps a picture of them like that as Alex sits down next to her, “You think it’s cute now. Wait until that wish comes true and they have to go to school, or—” she reaches out and grabs Gertie around the waist, pulling her onto her lap, “to an awards dinner where they refuse to wear anything remotely appropriate.”

JJ looks up at Alex, suddenly curious, “Who did that, Mama?”

Alex kisses Gertie’s dimple on her cheek, “Your big sister did, when she was three.”

Maggie, Lena and Kara laugh—they remember it well: about five years ago, Eliza and Lena were being presented with recognition awards for their dissertation on alien physiology with an emphasis on children—and, more specifically, their proper treatment and care at the Luthor Family Children’s Hospital. There was a big ceremony downtown.

JJ crawls onto Maggie’s lap, and Lainey looks at her, “Was I there?” It’s her favorite question. Like she’s trying to rebuild the years of her life that she was too young to remember the first time around.

Maggie wraps her arms around JJ and smiles at her daughter, “Yes you were,” and Lainey grins. “You see that picture up there on the mantel?”

Everyone looks, and Lainey runs and reaches for it, coming back to the couch and squeezing between Alex and Maggie, “I was a baby!”

“Yep,” Maggie kisses the top of her head, and then Lainey sees her sister in the photo, and dissolves into a fit of giggles. JJ looks too, and follows suit.

Gertie grabs the picture from her hands, “Hey!” until she sees it too, then she laughs, “Mom! You let me go to the party like that!” she’s a little offended.

Alex shakes her head, “No way, young lady. That’s all you. You _insisted_. You wouldn’t wear anything else for three weeks.”

Maggie’s laughing, remembering: a week before the ceremony, their well-behaved Gertrude had suddenly become very particular about her wardrobe. The only thing she would wear was a purple leotard and rainbow-striped rain boots. She would cry and scream when they tried to get her to wear anything else—the only other acceptable option was nakedness. So for three weeks, Gertie wore the leotard ensemble all day and slept naked—except for her Pull-Ups—every night.

Maggie looks at Gertie now—all her baby rolls gone, her once-chunky arms and legs now stretched out and lanky. But her dark eyes and dark curls are the same, and the dimples when she grins were there from day one. Her heart’s torn between missing that baby girl and the excitement of seeing the person she’s becoming.

She catches Alex’s eyes, “You called your mom in tears the night before, do you remember?”

Alex inhales sharply, “Oh my god, I _did_.”

Kara laughs, “I totally believe that.”

“And Eliza said ‘Let her be naked, if she wants to be naked!’”

Everyone laughs, because Lena’s not far off. As strict as Eliza could be with Alex and Kara, when it came to her grandchildren, she was the biggest pushover. She lived just to see smiles on their little faces as often as she could, and left any parenting to their actual parents. It was both adorable and frustrating.

“Me see! Me see!” and Alex hands the picture over to the little hands on Kara and Lena’s lap.

Audrey points at the photo, “Baby!”

“Baby Lainey,” Lena supplies.

“Baby Lane,” she repeats.

She moves further along the photo, “Baby Gertie.”

“Gigi!” she grins. Then her eyes light up, “Mama! Dat’s you!” she points to Lena and Kara in the photo.

Lena nods, “That’s right. And who’s this?”

She looks down at Jeremiah, “Papa!” then she sees Eliza, “Makack!”

Lena winces, and Kara covers her face with her hand—but everyone else laughs. They have no idea how the twins turned “Grandma” into “Makack,” but it’s certainly stuck. Eliza couldn’t care less. When prompted they can both actually say “grandma,” but as soon as they see Eliza it reverts to their made-up word.

Alex grins, “I hope they call her that forever. It’s the funniest thing.”

Kara glares—she would throw a pillow at her right now if she didn’t have Maddie falling asleep in her lap—and opts for sticking out her tongue. Alex only laughs harder.

Maggie looks to Lainey, “Bug, you better put the movie on or it’s gonna be bed time before we even get it started.”

…

They make it about halfway through the movie, and the kids are all asleep.

Lena’s also asleep with her head resting on Kara’s, half sitting on her lap, and half sort of awkwardly sharing the armchair. Audrey is asleep in her arms, and Maddie is curled against Kara’s chest, sucking her thumb.

On the couch, Alex has her feet up on the coffee table and Gertie fully stretched out, face-down, across her whole body. JJ is asleep with his head on one of Maggie’s thighs and Lainey is asleep on the other.

Kara looks to Alex, “How are we supposed to get up?”

“Very carefully?” Alex guesses.

Kara slowly turns her head to kiss Lena’s cheek, and watches Lena blink awake, “Hey, honey. Let’s get these kids to bed, ok?”

Lena’s still mostly asleep so she just nods. She carefully turns Audrey on her lap, tucking her into her shoulder. She then stands, and reaches her free hand out to pull Kara up from the chair—who’s other arm is holding little Maddie close to her chest.

Alex watches the four of them go upstairs, then turns to Maggie, “Ok, that was way too easy for them.”

“Yeah, sorry, but I can’t carry any of these kids with one arm anymore,” she laughs. She carefully lifts Lainey’s head and lays her back onto the couch, then does the same with JJ as she slips out from between them.

She stands in front of Alex—who is still pinned down by the eight-year-old laying on top of her whole body. She considers the situation, “Well, Ally…I think you’re stuck there for good. Nice knowing ya. It’s been fun,” she grins.

“Don’t you dare,” Alex whines.

Maggie bends down and kisses Gertie’s forehead and then Alex’s lips, gently brushing her hair away from her face, “Let me get the other two to bed, and then I’ll come help you with the leopard.”

“ _Snow_ leopard,” Alex corrects.

“Yes, of course.”

Maggie picks up JJ first, and he half wakes up, but she rubs his back,“It’s alright, buddy. Time for bed. Go back to sleep,” and when he realizes what’s happening, he closes his eyes again.

She returns a few minutes later and repeats a similar process with Lainey.

Before she comes back, Kara and Lena are tiptoeing down the stairs, now changed into pajamas. Lena goes to the kitchen to make coffee, and Kara strolls up to her sister with a smirk, “You look cozy.”

“Please help,” she begs.

Kara reaches down to grab behind both of Alex’s shoulders, “Ready?” Alex puts her feet on the floor and wraps both arms around her daughter, holding her as tight as she dares. She nods.

In one motion, Kara easily pulls Alex to her feet.

Maggie enters a second later, “Well that was a lot more graceful than I could’ve done,” she admits. Alex slips by, pausing a second for Maggie to kiss Gertie and whisper, “Sweet dreams,” then carries their sleeping daughter up the stairs to her bed.

Kara flops onto the now-empty couch, “Christmas is so much more exhausting as an adult.”

Lena appears with two mugs of coffee in one hand, and a third in the other that she hands to Maggie before sitting down next to her wife, “Here, love,” she hands Kara the second mug.

Kara sits up straighter and her eyes light up, “Is this—?”

But Maggie’s already taken a sip, “The famous Irish coffee. You have a gift, Lena.”

Kara kisses her wife and grins, “She’s right you know? You _do_ have a gift…several, in fact…”

Maggie smacks her leg before sitting next to her, “Keep those gifts to yourself, kid.”

But Lena ignores that request, kissing Kara behind her ear as Kara’s cheeks turn pink, “Why should she? You never do,” she laughs.

Alex hits the bottom of the stairs a second later, “Never do what?”

Lena points to the kitchen counter where a fourth mug is steaming. Alex grins and takes it and a tray of cookies to the living room.

As soon as she sits down, Maggie puts a hand on her thigh and kisses her soundly—mostly for the reaction that comes a second later.

“Maggie!” Kara groans.

Maggie grins at Alex, “Never keep my hands to myself.”

“Oh…well…” she pushes Maggie’s hair behind her ear and whispers low, “Never stop.”

Maggie tilts her head, and her dimples flash, “That’s a promise.”

“Are you done torturing me?” Kara whines.

“For now,” Alex concedes. She automatically lifts her arm so Maggie can curl up against her side, before draping it back over her shoulders.

Lena stretches her legs out over the coffee table and yawns, “The twins’ gifts are in your room, right Alex?”

Alex nods, “In our closet.”

None of them have any motivation to move yet, though. They know Santa duties are ahead of them, but they’re also exhausted. They sip their coffees and nibble on the Christmas cookies, enjoying the silence.

Luckily, they’d worked out some Christmas rules early on, because between celebrating Hanukkah _and_ Christmas—not to mention the amount of over-generous adults in their kids’ lives—they needed to bring the gift-giving situation to a halt before their kids were spoiled or they no longer had space to live in their house.

So Santa filled their stockings and brought each kid one, bigger gift. Maggie and Alex’s kids picked out one thing for each of Lena and Kara’s kids, and vis versa. That was pretty much it. Except for Winn—who was allowed to keep giving the pajamas, because they were so perfect and unique, and the kids loved them. Everyone else was told “their presence was presents enough,” and some of them grumbled at first, but they got over it. And the kids never knew the difference.

Lena finishes her coffee and puts the mug on the table, then kisses Kara’s head, “Ready, love?”

Kara groans, but sits up slowly, reluctantly. Lena stands first and pulls her up, leading her toward Alex and Maggie’s room to get their daughter’s toys.

They’ve barely turned the corner, when a little snow leopard with long, dark curls appears at the top of the stairs. Alex and Maggie exchange a look, before Maggie calls quietly, “You’re supposed to be in bed, Gertrude.”

“I know,” she mumbles. But something in her voice is…off.

Alex whispers, “Kara…” to Maggie, who nods. She heads down the hall, as casually as she can, to make sure Lena and Kara don’t bring out “Santa’s” presents, while Alex goes to Gertie, who meets her at the bottom of the stairs.

Alex immediately notices that she’s either been crying, is about to cry, or both. She scoops up their eldest daughter—who is almost getting too big, so she does it every chance she can—and carries her little mini-Maggie to the couch.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart?”

She looks up at her mom with big, watery, brown eyes and a slight frown. “It’s not real,” and Alex is acutely aware that it’s not a question, it’s a statement.

She knows where this is already headed, but she’s going to make sure before she says anything, “What’s not real?”

“Santa Claus.”

She sighs and brushes the curls back from Gertie’s face to buy herself a few moments.

Her first thought is to deny it. _Of course Santa’s real! The presents and the sleigh and the reindeer and the North Pole and the elves… It’s all real!_

Her second thought is, _Maggie should be here._ But her wife is somewhere in the back of their house, and she can’t really go to her.

Her third thought is the one she says aloud, but also very gently, “No, baby. He’s not.”

There’s a combination of satisfaction and loss on little Gertie’s face and Alex tries not to cry when she kisses her forehead.

“Then why do you tell us he is?”

She has to take a deep breath again. She knows Gertie’s almost nine now, and it’s a valid question from a kid her age, but she doesn’t want her to grow up so fast…or at all, really.

_Maggie should really be here for this,_ she thinks for the second time in as many minutes.

And as if she read her mind, she looks up and Maggie’s walking back down the hall, wearing a confused and slightly concerned look on her face. She sits next Alex and Gertie, and frowns, “Everything ok?”

Gertie looks between her mothers nervously, because she was ok asking the question to Alex, but her other mama…even at eight, Gertie knows how much Christmas means to Maggie.

Alex lifts her chin, “It’s okay.”

Maggie’s more concerned now, but she tries to hide it when Gertie looks at her, “Um…why…why do you tell us Santa’s real if he’s not?” she whispers.

And her eyes go wide, and it feels a little like someone knocked the wind out of her—she wasn’t expecting that at all.

Gertie’s eyes well up and Maggie pulls her onto her lap without hesitation and hugs her tight, “Oh no, honey. I’m sorry. Don’t cry. Hey, it’s ok…I’m sorry, jellybean. You just surprised me, is all.”

Gertie’s crying and Maggie is devastated, and she feels Alex rub her back. She wants to cry too—but she doesn’t, she pulls it together, “Hey, listen. It’s a very important question. I’m glad you asked me. Ok?”

Her face in Maggie’s neck, Gertie barely nods—but at least she’s stopped crying.

She thought she’d be prepared for the day her kids asked about Santa, but she also never expected that day to be today. She tries to gather her thoughts as her daughter’s breathing evens out on her chest.

She shares a look with Alex—neither of them sure what to say—but Gertie doesn’t unwrap her arms from Maggie’s neck. She starts rubbing her back, “I don’t know why we tell you about Santa, baby. We just do. It’s part of the holiday. Santa brings presents.”

“So none of it’s real?”

“Well…” Maggie starts. But Alex jumps in then.

She puts a hand on Gertie’s chin so she looks at her, “Of course it’s real, bean. Just…not the way you’re thinking of it.”

Gertie wipes her eyes, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Maggie tries not to laugh, but Alex keeps going, “Well…uh, Santa Claus—as a person, he’s…not real.” She says carefully, “But he’s more than just one person. He’s…all the good things that happen around Christmas. Does that make sense?”

Gertie gives her a blank stare, “Not really.”

Maggie tries, “Well, you know how if you’re not good, Santa doesn’t bring you presents?”

“Yeah.”

“Ok. So the real magic of Christmas—and of Santa Claus—is that for a while, almost everyone, even the adults, tries very hard to be good.”

She tilts her head, “That’s it?”

Now Maggie does laugh, “Well, it’s more than that, but it’s hard to explain. But you’ll know it when you see it. And you feel it. Everyone believes a little more. They believe in Santa, but also in magic, and happiness, and goodness.”

Gertie considers the information for a moment, “Can you give me an example?”

Maggie sighs, “She may have my looks, but that is all you, Al.”

Alex rolls her eyes, “Thanks,” and Maggie winks. “I can’t really give you a good example, bean. You’ll have to look for it tomorrow. Watch your sister’s face when she wakes you up in the morning, or Maddie and Audrey’s faces when they see that Santa ate the cookies they left out. Or your brother when he sees what Santa brought him. You’ll see it. You’ll feel it.”

Gertie nods like she’s taken that direction as her personal mission.

“The best part about finding out about Santa, is that you get to become Santa…for others. For your siblings, and your cousins,” Maggie adds.

Gertie knows what she doesn’t say, “So I can’t tell Lainey?”

Alex sees the disappointment on her face. They’re close—almost as close as Alex and Kara—and she tells her everything. “This is one thing you should try not to tell her, ok?”

She sighs, “Ok.”

Maggie kisses her cheek, and Alex does too, “Time for bed now, jellybean.”

She looks up at Maggie, “Will you carry me, Mommy?” and her big eyes are still watery from crying, and _that damn pout_ , Maggie thinks. She shoots a glance at Alex, who’s biting back a grin, because she knows what Maggie’s thinking about that pouty face.

But there’s nothing Maggie wouldn’t do for that face—for any of her kids, or Alex, or the Super Family—so she smiles, “Of course, baby.”

She carries Gertie upstairs, and Alex watches them leave with a sad smile on her face.

Not five seconds later, Kara and Lena peer around the corner, casually strolling into the room, each with a tricycle in their hand.

Alex laughs, “Subtle, guys.”

“We waited as long as we could!”

Alex suddenly realizes they’d been in her room the entire time, “Uh…what—what were you doing in there this whole time, anyway?”

Kara blushes and ducks past her sister to put the two tricycles under the tree, and Lena shrugs with a grin, “Just…waiting.”

Alex is torn between wanting to know more and not wanting to know anything else. So she glares.

Lena never wavers—Alex’s glare does nothing to intimidate her, but she does it anyway. She feels it’s her duty as the big sister. Kara folds easily. She kisses Alex on the cheek and takes Lena’s hand, tugging her up the stairs and far away from that glare, “Goodnight, Alex!”

…

Maggie comes down the stairs a few minutes later to find Alex, sitting on the floor of the living room, tying a large tag on an even larger box. She slips behind her, wrapping her arms around Alex’s stomach and resting her cheek on Alex’s back, closing her eyes.

Alex reaches a hand back and massages Maggie’s scalp, “Tired, babe?”

She hums in agreement, “Your kids ask too many questions.”

“Oh, so suddenly they’re _my_ kids?” Alex chuckles.

She can feel Maggie’s grin on the back of her shoulder, “Mmhmm. Definitely yours.”

“Okay…” she rolls her eyes.

She finishes tying the tag, and pushes the heavy box a little further under the tree, and Maggie suddenly starts laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

Maggie stands and pulls Alex to her feet, still grinning. She points under the tree, “You really just put a box of books under that tree for a five-year-old, and then tried to say these kids aren’t yours?”

Alex puts her forehead on Maggie’s shoulder, laughing too, “Yeah, I guess I did.”

She lifts Alex’s head from her shoulder and kisses her slow, sweet, “Come on, maybe we can get like…two hours of sleep this year.”

“Oh, now that is all _your_ kids.”

She laughs, “So now they’re mine?”

Alex grins, “You can blame me for the books, but 5AM wake-ups on Christmas morning is entirely your doing.”

Maggie shrugs, then looks into Alex’s eyes, and raises an eyebrow, “Hey, do you remember our first Christmas? I think we were up at 5AM that day too…”

Even all these years later, Alex blushes, “Well I did get you a pretty great gift that year.”

Maggie slowly rakes her eyes up and down Alex’s body, remembering, “You did. I couldn’t wait to unwrap it…”

Alex takes her hand and starts backing down the hall toward their bedroom, pulling Maggie along, “You know…I think I might have a similar gift for you this year…and I might even let you open it early…”

Maggie bites her bottom lip, “You know, I have been really, _really_ good this year…”

…

It’s still dark out when their door creaks open, and a quiet pitter-patter of little feet and giggles makes it’s way through their room.

Alex is curled up into Maggie’s side, with an arm around her waist, and then suddenly there’s a six-year-old burrowing in between, loudly whispering, “Merry Christmassss!”

She gently squeezes Maggie’s side in a small attempt to wake her up, before pulling her daughter close, “Merry Christmas, Elena.”

Lainey’s eyes are glittering and she’s grinning from ear to ear, “Can we open presents now?”

Alex kisses her forehead, “You know the rules, bug.”

She responds with a dramatic sigh, then a mischievous grin, “So I just have to wake up Mommy and Auntie Kara and Auntie Lena and the babies!”

She rolls toward Maggie in an instant, but Alex is faster. She sits up and grabs her around the middle and pulls her back onto her lap, “Oh no you don’t, little miss. You’re supposed to _wait_ for them to wake up. Not wake them all up.”

“But _mama_ …” she whines.

Lainey’s previous sentence suddenly processes, “Wait—did you wake up your brother and sister?” Lainey tries—and fails—to look innocent.

But then Maggie stirs and blinks awake, and Lainey looks up at Alex with a dimpled smirk—looking so much like Maggie just now, with that cheeky grin, taking Maggie’s opened eyes as her own personal victory.

“Merry Christmas, bug,” she says, yawning.

Lainey wiggles in Alex’s lap, “Merry Christmas, Mommy!”

“Come here,” Maggie sits up and Lainey leaps into her arms. She hugs her tight and kisses her, then whispers something in her ear. Lainey looks at her with wide eyes—then back at Alex—then back to Maggie who just nods and winks.  
She clambers off the bed and takes off down the hall at a sprint.

“You did _not_ just tell her to wake up Kara!”

Maggie lays back down in Alex’s lap, grinning, “Of course I did.”

“Maggie!”

“Hey! The number of times Kara has woken us up or…” she lowers her voice “…interrupted us… She deserves it. Plus, it’s Christmas! No one gets to sleep in on Christmas.”

Alex shakes her head, and Maggie sits up. She holds Alex’s face gently, whispering, “Ally…”

With one word she has Alex’s full attention, and the sudden intimacy makes her stomach flip. She puts her hands on top of Maggie’s, “Merry Christmas, Mags,” she breathes.

Maggie flashes her dimples and Alex melts. “Merry Christmas,” she whispers, before pulling Alex into a long kiss.

But before they even think to pull apart, there’s giggling and more than one person climbing on top of their bed—then more.

“Groooossss,” is the first voice they hear.

They laugh and separate, and without even looking, Maggie grabs a pillow and throws it right at that voice, “Impeccable timing as always, Little Danvers.”

Kara ducks the pillow and plops her twins on the bed—one on Maggie and one on Alex—grinning, “Not sorry!” she singsongs,  “This one’s on you, sis,” then she picks up Lainey next and tosses her gently on the bed too.

Gertie is also at the foot of the bed, and Lena is standing behind them with JJ in her arms—the little bear still mostly asleep on her chest.

Alex pulls her niece onto her lap with a smirk, “She’s got a point, Mags,” then tickles her, “You wanna open presents, Miss Maddie?”

“Presents!” she giggles.

Maggie grabs Audrey and raises her up over her head, “How about you? Presents?”

“Santa!”

Maggie puts her down, laughing, “Close enough.”

Lainey and Gertie start jumping on the bed, chanting, “Pres-ents! Pres-ents!” and the twins join in as best they can.

Alex and Maggie get out of bed, and regard the chaos with a look of amusement. Alex goes to Kara and hugs her tight, “Merry Christmas, little sis.”

Kara squeezes her tighter, “Merry Christmas, Alex.”

Maggie pulls on Alex’s old Stanford sweatshirt over her t-shirt, then claps her hands together, “Alright, who thinks Santa came?”

“I do!” JJ hops out of Lena’s arms and runs toward the door with Lainey, the twins stumbling right behind. Gertie gives Maggie a look from where she’s sitting on the bed, but she’s still grinning. Maggie winks at her.

“You know the rules—stockings first. Help your cousins out so they don’t pull the stockings down on their heads, ok?” Maggie gets four frantic nods in return, “Then you need to find a seat until all the grown ups get their coffee. You got it?”

“Got it!” Gertie shouts. Maggie looks to Alex, who just shrugs.

“Coffee takes _foreverrrr_ ,” JJ groans.

Maggie crosses her arms, “Well if Mommy doesn’t get coffee, then no one gets presents.”

“Okay, okay, okay!”

She laughs, “Ok.” She pauses a little, seeing how far she can push their patience, “Go get ‘em, kiddos.”

All five kids tear down the hall loudly, sprinting toward the living room.

…

Alex goes about making coffee, and within minutes, all five kids are sitting in small piles of goodies. There’s a flurry of wrapping paper flying through the air, along with shrieks and giggles and more than one Nerf bullet whizzing by. It’s all small stuff: a lot of candy, books, movies, socks and underwear, bubbles for the twins, Nerf guns for the older kids, a few card games—but they’re excited nonetheless.

Kara joins Alex in the kitchen to grab some coffee for herself and Lena. She leans against the counter and puts her head on her sister’s shoulder, “You know…every year I think it can’t get better, and somehow…it does.”

Alex wraps an arm around her little sister’s waist and hugs her tight, “We did pretty good, didn’t we?”

They look out into the living room where JJ’s got Audrey on his lap, reading her a book she brought over from her stocking. Gertie and Lainey are pooling together and then re-dividing their candy—Gertie grabbing all the Reese’s cups, and giving over her Hershey Kisses in a trade. Maddie brought over a doll for Maggie to open, and now her and Lena are laughing to the point of tears, in the middle of a weird Barbie tug-of-war because “Who packages kids toys like this? This is impossible!”

Barbie finally breaks free causing Lena and Maggie to lose their balance and nearly fall off the opposite ends of the couch. Kara and Alex crack up.

Kara puts a hand on her forehead, still giggling, “That was graceful.”

Alex laughs harder, “I wish I had a camera.”

Lena and Maggie look up at their wives, hoping neither saw that. But Kara and Alex are grinning and shaking their heads, making Lena and Maggie laugh harder.

Both sisters return to their wives’ sides with coffee, and suddenly the kids get quiet—staring up at their parents, waiting for permission to get whatever is under the tree waiting for them.

Alex grins, “Go ahead,” and the kids take off toward the tree.

“No, no!” Kara shouts, and both her and Lena use their free hand to grab the twin closest to them, hanging onto the smallest piece of their jammies and stopping them in their tracks.

“Mama!!” they cry at once. Lena puts her coffee down on the table, and Alex takes Kara’s, so they can put two hands on each toddler, scooping them up into their laps—despite their loud, squirming protests.

“Hey, _hey_ …it’s ok.” Lena looks at both of them, trying to calm them before they resort to actual crying, “You’re going to get your presents, I promise. But they’re too heavy. Let the big kids get them for you.”

“My presents!” Audrey shouts.

Kara frowns at her, “Hey, you be nice.” Audrey makes a pouty face that is so Kara, and Alex has to hide her face in Maggie’s shoulder to keep from laughing.

Lainey and Gertie come over a second later pushing two red, Radio Flyer tricycles with big, gold bows on them, “Audrey! Maddie! Look what Santa brought you!”

The twins turn at Lainey’s voice and their eyes go wide, Maddie yells, “Red bike!” and both twins wiggle out of Kara and Lena’s grasp and run to their new bikes.

Lena smiles at her nieces, “Thank you girls.”

Lainey shrugs and runs back to the tree to seek out her own present, but Gertie waits a little longer, and walks up to Maggie and Alex slowly, “Like that?” she says quietly.

Alex and Maggie smile back at her, “Exactly like that,” Alex says, and Gertie nods and follows after her sister.

Maggie’s eyes are brimming with tears, and Alex grabs her hand and squeezes it tight, “Just another first, babe,” she whispers.

And with that—her tears fall. She nudges Alex next to her, “Thanks a lot, Danvers. I was trying to hold it together.”

Alex puts a hand on her cheek and wipes Maggie’s tears gently, “A lifetime of firsts,” she promises again. She kisses her, “I love you.”

Maggie sighs, leaning into Alex’s chest, “I love you too.”

“Mom!” snaps them out of their little moment, and they look up and see JJ struggling with a large, very heavy box, “A little help?” he grunts.

Lainey and Gertie sigh, leaving their own boxes—once again—and all three of them push the box across the carpeting, sliding it toward where he was sitting on the floor.

“You must’ve been _really_ bad,” his sister laughs, “Santa brought you a lot of coal!”

“Elena Elizabeth!” Maggie scolds, but Lainey grins that impish grin with those dimples, and Maggie simply shakes her head.

Lainey runs back to get a similarly large box, although it’s light enough that she can manage it by herself. Gertie takes a seat on the floor with a smaller box in her lap.

The three of them tear into the wrapping paper. This time, Lainey’s first, “Oh my gosh, Mommy! Mama! I got a unicycle!” she shouts.

Kara and Lena exchange a look of surprise and confusion, then look to Alex and Maggie, who shrug with a look that says, _It’s what she wanted._

There had been an assembly at the kids’ school earlier in the year, before they went home for the summer. There were acrobats and people on stilts and unicycles and fire-breathing—nearly a full circus, but without animals—and Lainey had been talking about the stilts and unicycles for the past six months, nonstop. Alex and Maggie eventually gave in. It was the only thing she’d asked Santa for.

Lainey is already doing her best work destroying the box to get to the unicycle, when JJ’s eyes go wide and he holds a book up to Alex and Maggie, “Mom! Mama! These are…these” he’s so excited, he’s stuttering and mildly hyperventilating, “this—this is an entire box of alien books! It’s—it’s got everything! There’s new books about Krypton, but also—” he looks into the box again, “books on Starhaven and Maaldoria and Sedenach, and—and Thanagar. Mama! Mommy! There’s _everything!”_

His sisters’ heads whip up in the middle his rant, with Gertie stopping before she even finishes unwrapping her gift, “Sedenach?”

Lainey’s interested too, “Maaldoria? Can I see that?!” JJ digs in the box and hands over two books as he pulls another out to check the spine, “Earth-One? Does that mean…” he pulls out another book, “Earth-Two!” He starts muttering to himself, now nearly upside-down, head-first in the box of books, “How many other Earths…”

Maggie nudges Alex next to her, and whispers low enough that the kids won’t hear, “Nerds,” she teases, but she kisses Alex’s cheek and grins. They went through a lot of trouble to get those books.

Kara and Alex, and occasionally Maggie—though she refused to go to space, only visiting other Earths, which Kara and Alex never once mentioned was still space—used the transmatter portal in every spare moment they had, collecting novels and reference texts from every resource they could think of.

Barry, Cisco, Felicity, Winn and Sara helped them out too. They pooled together their efforts and came up with about 35 books for JJ. Meanwhile, another hundred plus are sitting in the DEO right now. They’re saving them for when he finishes these and wants more—and also so Winn and Alex can read and digitally catalog them first.

“Did you even open your present, jellybean?” Alex asks. Because Gertie is already fully immersed in a book, and if left to her own devices, she’d forget everything else going on until she reached the back cover.

Her head snaps up and she looks around for a second, eyes wide, remembering where she is, “Oh! Oops,” she giggles.

“Yeah…definitely yours,” Maggie teases.

Lainey finally opens her box and drags her unicycle down toward the hallway, where she can practice and hold on to the walls for support. The twins follow—rarely out of her shadow—dragging their new tricycles toward the hardwood floor of the kitchen.

Kara and Lena stand to help their girls, Maggie calling behind them, “Push the table into the corner, they’ll have more room.”

Kara raises her eyebrows at that, “What?” Maggie grins. Kara shakes her head, laughing.

Gertie gasps slightly, and Maggie turns her attention back to her daughter. She picks up the camera in the box and turns it over in her hands, slowly, inspecting every part of it.

“This is just like Uncle Jimmy’s,” she whispers.

Maggie grins, “That’s the one that was on your list to Santa, wasn’t it?”

Gertie nods emphatically, holding the camera up to her eye and pretending to take pictures with it—but she puts it down a second later with a frown.  
“What is it, bean?”

She stands slowly and climbs onto Alex’s lap, facing Maggie too, “But he never got it. Because…he’s…he’s not…” she can’t bring herself to finish the sentence and Alex hugs her tight and kisses the top of her head.

Maggie puts a hand on her cheek, “He’s as real as you want him to be, sweetie. You’re allowed to believe in him as much as you want. As long as you want. No one can take that away from you.”

Gertie nods and looks down at the camera again, a little sad, and Alex tickles her lightly, until her dimples show. She puts a hand under her chin, “Go on and test it out. Then you can show all your pictures to Uncle Jimmy when he comes over for dinner later.”

That makes her eyes light up. She hops off Alex’s lap and runs over to show her camera to her sister.

Maggie’s eyes are tearing up and she looks worried again. Alex puts a hand on her head, rubbing a thumb over the creases on her forehead until she relaxes—she kind of knows the answer to the question she’s about to ask, “What’s the matter, babe?”

“I hope it’s not ruined for her,” she whispers.

Alex wraps both arms around Maggie tight and pulls her close to her side, kissing her temple, “Hey, it’s not ruined. It can never be—look at her, Mags.”

Maggie takes a deep breath, and slowly turns toward the room in front of her.

The twins are chasing each other in circles around the kitchen island on their new bike. Kara and Lena are leaning against the table they’ve pushed into the corner. JJ is sitting on top of it, between them, with a book open on his lap—grinning, and pointing, and rambling nonstop.

And little Gertie is perched on the bottom of the staircase, camera in hand, one eye shut tight—she still hasn’t mastered taking pictures with both eyes open, but James is working on it—and snapping away at Lainey who’s already making it down the hall on her unicycle without holding on to the wall—well, mostly.

She gets to the end and loses her balance right in front of Gertie, who drops the camera away from her face and rushes to her sister—even though Lainey’s already giggling.

“Did you get a picture of that? Can I see it?” she laughs. Gertie scrolls through the photos on her camera and must find at least one, because both girls dissolve into laughter a second later.

“Nothing about Christmas is ruined, Maggie. It’s perfect. You’re perfect. It’s always going to be perfect.”

“Promise?”

Alex holds Maggie’s face in her hands and kisses her, “I promise you, that even when we’re old and our kids are grown and moved out and Gertie is President and Lainey has run off with the circus and JJ has read every book on this planet—and on every other planet he discovers—that we will still have Christmas, and it will still be perfect.”

Maggie rolls her eyes, laughing and looks up at her, “President, huh? Setting that bar a little high there?”

Alex grins, “She can be whatever she wants. But we both know, if one of them was going to become President…”

“Oh yeah, it’s that one,” Maggie agrees.

That one runs up to them a second later, “Mommy, I’m hungry.”

“I can fix that,” Maggie smirks. She peels herself away from Alex and stands, and Gertie puts her hands on Maggie’s shoulders and jumps up. She catches her effortlessly, and piggybacks her into the kitchen.

“Cinnamon rolls?” Gertie grins.

“Of course!”

Gertie gasps, “Can we put them in the waffle maker like last year?”

“Of course!”

…

After cinnamon roll waffles and waking up at five in the morning, by about eight, they’re all tired again. The kids turn on one of the movies they got from Santa, and everyone snuggles up in the living room with coffee and hot cocoa and blankets.

…

Later that afternoon, about an hour before everyone should be arriving, Gertie, Lainey and JJ are setting the table while Maggie is finishing up some cooking. Lena is rocking Audrey, trying to get her to take a nap, and Kara is looking around for Alex, who was supposed to be putting Maddie down for a nap too.

She finds Alex in her room, in the reading chair by the window. Maddie is laying on her chest, tucked up under her chin, sucking her thumb and fast asleep.

Alex’s eyes are closed too, but she opens them when Kara’s about halfway across the room.

“Hey, sis.”

Alex blinks awake and smiles at her sister, “Hey.”

“I was wondering where you ran off too. I thought you were going to put her down for a nap.”

Alex looks down at her sleeping niece and kisses her head of golden curls, “I was.”

Kara chuckles and sits in the chair opposite her, “How’d that work out for you?”

“Pretty well, actually. I got a nap too.”

Kara closes her eyes for a second now, “That sounds amazing. Kids are exhausting—a little heads up on that would’ve been nice.”

“Like you would’ve listened anyway,” Alex laughs.

Kara grins, “Yeah…probably not.”

“Is anyone here yet?”

“Nope. You can nap a little longer.”

“I miss my kids being this little and snuggly,” and Kara tilts her head, curious, “I love them now too—of course—I just…I don’t know. I miss baby snuggles,” Alex shrugs.

“You could have more babies…” Kara smirks.

“No, no. No more babies,” Alex laughs, “We are definitely done there.”

Kara stands and kisses her daughter’s cheek and the top of Alex’s head, “Well…” she turns and walks toward the door, but stops short and looks back over her shoulder, “maybe Lena and I will help you out with that…” she winks.

And Alex’s eyes go wide and her jaw drops, but she can’t shout or get up because of the sleeping toddler on her chest, so she just…gapes. Kara giggles and shrugs and slips out the door, closing it behind her with a teasing whisper, “Merry Christmas, Alex.”


	3. Your Heart Was Beating Too Fast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prequel to the other fics. In this one, all the kids are a few years younger.

Alex and Maggie barely push the door open, when Kara cries, “Alex! In here. _Please_ …please help me.”

There is a lot of crying coming from Kara and Lena’s bedroom, and not all of it sounds like it’s from their newborn baby girls.

Alex kisses Maggie on the cheek, leaving her to occupy their three kids in the living room and hurries down the hall toward all the noise.

Her jaw drops in the doorway to Kara and Lena’s bedroom.

Toys and blankets and diapers and bottles are everywhere. Kara is cradling two tiny, pink bundles—one in each arm—bouncing and rocking and trying everything she can to make them stop crying, which they don’t seem to be inclined to do, as her own tears stream down her cheeks.

Alex wants to laugh and cry at the same time.

“Lena had a meeting, she had to go…she…and I…I  _can’t_. Alex, they won’t stop.”

“Oh, Kara…”

“Alex, _please_ ,” she pleads.

Alex ignores the screaming babies for just a second, choosing to wrap her baby sister up in a hug, and wipe a few of her tears first, “It’s gonna be fine. I promise.”

“I can’t—Alex, I can’t…”

Alex rubs her back, “You _can_. You can do this.”

Kara shakes her head and Alex kisses her cheek, then takes one baby—she’s not even sure which one, they look identical—out of Kara’s arms gently.

She lets the blanket she was wrapped in fall to the ground and holds her niece close against her chest, one hand under her tiny bottom, and one holding her head, her face turned so her little ear is right over Alex’s heart.

Madeleine stops crying almost instantly. Kara deflates, “ _How?_ ”

“Shh…” Alex rocks slightly, “Just breathe, Kara. Try to relax.”

Kara tries, she takes a deep breath. She pulls little Audrey close to her chest and sways gently, trying to mimic Alex. But her daughter still screams, and Kara’s tears start again too, “Alex, she won’t—I can’t make her stop.”

Alex puts the now-calmer Maddie down in the bassinet next to Lena and Kara’s bed. She goes to her sister and puts a hand on Kara’s back and one on her niece’s, hoping to calm either one even a fraction, but Kara shrugs her off and carefully hands Audrey off to her sister, “Please, Alex? I’m sorry, it…it hurts. I—I just…just make her ok. Make her stop crying. _Please_.”

Alex takes the baby, but is more concerned for her sister. Except Kara walks off before she can stop her.

Maggie hears a door slam down the hall, and kisses five-year-old Gertie on the head, “Keep an eye your brother and sister for me, ok? Stay here.” Gertie nods, while three-year-old Lainey and two-year-old JJ play quietly with the stuffed animals they brought with them.

She finds Kara in the nursery, sitting on the floor opposite the babies’ crib, her head in her hands, crying.

She sits silently next to her and takes her hand in her own. Kara leans onto her shoulder and Maggie lets her cry.

“Maggie…I can’t. I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can,” she says gently, but firm.

“No, I _can’t_. And every time they cry, it…it just breaks my heart. And I can’t make them stop…and that only makes worse.”

Maggie’s heart breaks for her little sister, “You’re doing fine, Kara. And that feeling…that doesn’t go away, anyway. It’ll hurt every time they cry. So don’t worry about that.”

Kara barely hears her, “Lena is _so good_ at it, you know? One or both, and she’s…flawless. And I can usually handle one, but there’s two of them. And if they’re happy, it’s fine, but then they cry at the same time, so you’re outnumbered. And…and Alex? She just comes in, and they’re better. They’re happy. Instantly. She makes it look _so_ easy…”

Maggie smirks, “Well that’s unfair. Alex makes everything look easy. She sucks.”

Kara was about to say something, but the blunt statement stops her mid-thought, and she just laughs. Maggie’s takes pride in that small victory.

“Hey…do you remember when Gertie was born?” Kara nods, “Do you remember what you said?”

“She looked like an alien?”

Maggie chuckles, “Yes, that—thanks, by the way—but also, what else? Do you remember? I was holding her and she was screaming and Alex wasn’t around and I was freaking out.”

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, she thinks back, she remembers, “Your heart was beating too fast. Way too fast. You were scared.”

“I was terrified,” Maggie corrects. “I was terrified, so she was terrified, and it didn’t help either of us.”

Kara shakes her head, “I don’t…I—I can’t…”

“Stop. You _can_. You are. You’re doing great, Kara.”

Kara doesn’t believe her, “Lena’s better…”

Maggie squeezes her hand, “Hey, Lena and Alex…they’re…calm under pressure. Always. But you and me? At work? Sure, we can be. But in life? We’re…” she laughs a little, “we’re slightly less calm.”

Kara sighs, and Maggie grins, “We are who we are, Little Danvers. It might take time, but you’ll be fine. More than fine. You’re going to be incredible. You’re going to be _super_.”

Kara rolls her eyes, and she can’t help but laugh—which is exactly the reaction Maggie had hoped for.

Then Lainey runs in, followed by Gertie, who’s trying to stop her, “Lainey, no!” When they see Kara and Maggie on the floor, they freeze.

Lainey walks up slowly, curiously, to Kara and holds up her stuffed hippo and boops Kara’s nose with it, “Muah! No cry. All better!”

Maggie’s heart nearly bursts out of her chest. Kara grins and hugs Lainey tight.

“I’m sorry, Mommy. I tried to stop her,” Gertie whispers.

“It’s ok,” she holds out her hand, “Come here, jellybean.”

Gertie walks to Maggie and sits down on her lap, looking at Kara, “Auntie Kara, are you mad?”

Kara shakes her head, “No, no. I’m not mad, G. I’m…I was sad. But not about you. Never about you.”

Gertie looks to Maggie, unsure, “You’re fine, baby. Auntie Kara is just having a bad day. You think we can cheer her up?”

“Ice cream!” Lainey shouts.

Kara and Maggie laugh. “Well she certainly gets you,” Maggie grins.

Both women stand and lead the kids toward the living room. When they turn the corner, the girls take off toward the toys, and Kara doesn’t make it three steps before Alex has her in a bear hug.

“I’m so sorry, Kara. I didn’t mean…I wasn’t trying to…” she sighs, “I—I just wanted to help.”

Kara hugs her tighter, “You did, Alex. Thank you for rescuing me. I needed you. Your nieces needed you. You were perfect.”

They pull apart and Alex frowns, “I wasn’t trying to be perfect…”

“I know,” Kara smiles, “You never are. Which only makes it _more_ perfect. And kind of annoying,” she laughs.

Alex swats her arm, “Hey!”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Crying starts again from the back bedroom and Kara sighs. Alex squeezes her arm, “Breathe. You got this.”

…

Lena comes home an hour later, and opens the door to find five extra people there—although she’s long since been surprised to see any of the Super Fam in her apartment unannounced.

Maggie is in the kitchen making a salad, with Gertie sitting on the counter, stealing tomato and cucumber pieces from the bowl. Alex is on the floor of the living room, reading JJ and Lainey a story. She doesn’t see her wife or babies anywhere.

Alex looks up from the floor and gives her a small wave, “Hey.”

“Hi…?”

“We uh…came by for dinner,” she lies with a wink, and answers the question on Lena’s face, “She’s in the nursery.”

Lena grins and tries not to run down the hall to her new little family. She opens the door to the nursery slowly, quietly.

In the chair near the window, Kara has Audrey asleep, cradled in the crook of her arm, with Maddie propped up on her knees, eyes wide open, looking up at her. 

She’s talking to her in the softest voice, gently tracing her finger along her cheek, and under her chin, coaxing out her newborn smiles—which make Kara’s whole face light up.

It takes Lena’s breath away—and it takes a few seconds for her to actually comprehend Kara’s whispers, “…mama’s home now, and that’s my favorite. When we’re all together. Your mama is the smartest, prettiest women in the whole galaxy. And I’ve been to fourteen planets, so I know these things. But your mama, she knows a lot more things. She’s so, so smart. But you know. You’ll see. She’ll teach you everything you could ever want to learn. And she loves you so, so much.”

“And she loves _you_ so, so much,” Lena whispers, now standing over Kara’s shoulder. She kisses her wife and lifts her chin, “How did it go, love?”

Kara exhales, “Uh…mostly terrible.”

Lena frowns and kisses her forehead, “I’m sorry. I should’ve stayed.”

“No, it’s ok. But I’m glad you’re back,” she turns back to the babies with a grin, “We figured it out,” and her voice changes again, “Didn’t we, Miss Maddie? Did you say hi to your mama? You should give her a hug. I know she missed you.”

Lena picks up her baby girl, kissing her cheek and holding her to her chest, “I missed you very much, my Madeleine.” Kara takes her free hand in her own, “I missed you all very much.”

“We missed you too.”


	4. There Will Be Other Date Nights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Probably not my best, and it definitely went a little differently than I thought it was going to, but…here we are. :)
> 
> Sanvers Date Night and the Kids AU. Less kids in this one, but they’re there.

 

“Gertrude Kara Danvers, if you make me late for my date tonight, you are going to get a knuckle sammich!”

A giggling mess of dark curls rounds the corner a second later, barreling down the stairs, and skidding to a stop at her feet, “Yuck.”

Alex laughs and kisses the top of her eldest daughter’s head, “Dating is gross?”

“Yes.”

Alex considers this, “You know what? You’re right. It is. Until you’re 30.”

She deserves the eyeroll she gets, “ _Mama_ …”

Alex laughs and takes her daughter’s backpack from her, and then reaches for her hand, “Come on, baby. We’ve got to hurry. Your Mommy will kill me if I’m late.”

Date nights were rare with three kids, sure—but the love and romance never wavered. Plus, this time was a rare instance when the kids would be spending the _night_ with Kara and Lena, not just the evening. And it was a school night.

Maggie wouldn’t give Alex any hints, which meant a week of her imagination wandering off as to what her wife had in store for her. 

Every single outcome made her blush.

…

When they open the door to Kara and Lena’s, Maggie is leaning against the couch with her arms crossed, looking smug. She’s staring down Alex, but when Gertie hugs her side a second later, she instantly softens, “Hey, G. How was your day?”

“Good.”

“That’s good.” Maggie kisses the top of her head and she takes off down the hall, where it sounds like all the other kids are.

As soon as Gertie turns the corner, she raises an eyebrow at Alex, “You’re late.”

Alex points down the hall, “It’s her fault!”

Maggie pulls her by her waist until she’s pressed right against her, grinning, “Really? You’re gonna blame the eight-year-old?”

Alex smirks, “Yeah. Because it’s her fault.”

She laughs, “Ok…” She leans up to kiss her, “Hi.”

“Hey,” Alex grins.

JJ runs in a second later, interrupting their moment, “Mama!”

He runs right to her and she lifts him up, kissing his cheek and hugging him tight, “Hey Buddy! How was school?”

“Boring.”

_Not surprising._ It’s the same answer he gives every day. He’s too smart to be challenged in regular school, but they don’t really have a lot of other options, except for… “What about after school?”

“Super fun!”

_Good._ That answer also never changes. Twice a week, Lena picks him up after school and takes him to L-Corp for a few hours. He follows her and some of the more patient engineers around, while they teach him more about the projects they’re working on, along with some chemistry, biology, math or physics—which he loves.

He’s only five, but he’s already years ahead in those subjects. He’s learning simple stuff, but he catches on quickly and he loves learning how things work and asking a million questions—it’s a temporary solution, but so far they’re all ok with it.

He sits up and grinning at her, “Did you behave?”

“Yes, Mama.”

She arches an eyebrow at Lena, who’s appeared from the hall and is walking toward the kitchen, “Did he behave?”

“Yes, Mama,” she repeats with a grin. JJ laughs and Alex shakes her head before putting him back down on the floor.

A stampede of kids suddenly charges down the hall toward Lena in the kitchen, taking seats around the table for dinner. Unsurprisingly, Kara is chasing all of them. When she sees Alex, she flips up the Halloween mask from her face and hugs her sister, “Hey Alex!”

“Uh hey there…what even is that?”

Kara giggles and looks at the mask, “I’m not sure. Some kind of ghost-devil thing.”

Alex just shakes her head, then Maggie comes back trailing behind their middle daughter, “Mama!”

“Hi Lainey-bug!” she kneels down to give her a hug and a kiss, “How was your day?”

Lainey shrugs, “Fine, I guess.”

Alex scrunches up her face, “Just fine?”

She frowns, “I forgot hippo.”

“Oooh. Well,” that is serious. Hippo is Lainey’s stuffed animal that she’s had since she was a baby.  Gertie had picked it out for her for her first Christmas. He was matted and worn—and she loved him more than anything.

“You know, I think your sister found him and brought him here.” Lainey’s eyes go wide and she grins at Alex and runs to find her sister.

Maggie loops an arm around Alex’s waist and hip-checks her, “Ready, babe?”

“Depends. Where are we going?”

“Nope.”

Alex sighs, and looks over at the table. Her kids are all in their seats and giggling with their cousins as Lena starts filling plates. Kara catches her eye, “Go, while they’re all occupied by chicken nuggets,” she grins.

“Good point. Thank you, guys. See you tomorrow kids! I love you! _Behave_ , please.”

A chorus of “We will!” “Bye!” and “Love you!” answers her back.

Maggie takes her hand, and Alex follows her out the door a little giddy now, “So where are we going?”

“Nuh-uh, Danvers. No hints.”

…

The Triumph out front takes Alex by surprise. She’d ditched her Ducati years ago, but Maggie held onto hers—though she rarely had a chance to ride it. It mostly collected dust in the garage.

It’s familiar though. She slips on the back and wraps her arms around Maggie. She kind of forgot how freeing it felt here: body pressed against her wife, wind whipping around them, leaning into every curve.

They take the long way to the beach. They zig-zag through downtown and tear down the highway, then turn off to wind through the mountains, through the stretch of road that’s carved out of the canyon and leads to the coast. 

By the time they reach the beach, they’d been driving for about an hour, but the sun is only just starting to go down.

As soon as they take off their helmets, Alex looks worried, so Maggie worries, “Everything ok?”

Alex tilts her head, “I was gonna ask you the same question.”

Maggie flinches, but just barely, “What…what are you talking about?”

Alex notices. She puts her hands on Maggie’s cheeks and they’re burning hot, “You don’t look good.”

Maggie tries to laugh it off, “Wow. Thanks.”

“That’s not—” she sighs, “you look _sick_ , babe. You look not well.” She puts her hand on Maggie’s forehead and it’s way too hot, “Uh, yeah, no. We’re going home.”

If she was being honest, she knew she’d been feeling off since they turned down the canyon. Only the fact that the road had so many twists and turns probably kept Alex from noticing how she’d been leaning a little more than what was normal—but…it’s date night. She’ll fight it.

“I’m fine.” she insists, “It’s probably from the helmet.”

Alex holds her cheeks again, “Hey. You are not fine. You’re burning up and you’re pale. We’re going home.”

“Wait, no. Please? I’m fine. I…” she wavers a little under Alex’s stare, “Ok. Well…I will be. I think? It’s nothing.”

“Convincing.” Alex deadpans.

She pouts, “But it’s date night.”

Alex chuckles and wraps Maggie into a hug, “There will be other date nights. A million, trillion more.”

She tries to protest, but then she shivers. She’s suddenly freezing and she fights everything in her body telling her to wrap her jacket tighter, even though a small part of her brain still remembers it’s 80 degrees outside. 

She shrugs out of Alex’s arms to try and hide it, but of course, Alex noticed.

“We’re going home.” End of conversation.

Maggie reaches for her helmet, but Alex’s hand holds it down on the seat, “No way. You’re not riding like this.”

“How else are we going to get home?”

…

The cab drops them off outside their house half an hour later. Maggie has only gotten worse—although she claims it’s only a fever, and she’s not nauseous, and nothing else seems to be bothering her.

She’s now nearly asleep in Alex’s side. Alex pays the driver before gently waking her up and helping her out and into the house.

On the kitchen counter, there’s a container of chicken soup from Maggie’s favorite Thai place and the keys to the Triumph that Kara has already brought back and is now safely in their garage.

Maggie shuffles over to the couch and Alex shoots a quick thank you text to Kara. “Babe, why don’t you come to bed? Change out of your clothes.”

The only answer she receives is a low groan. She looks over to her wife, who’s still in a flannel button-down, jeans, boots, and a leather jacket, and is also now curled into a fevery, shivering ball on the couch.

Alex takes off her shoes, her jacket, and—with a bit more difficulty—her jeans, before covering her in a blanket.

She goes to their bedroom to find medicine and to make a few phone calls. The first is to Maggie’s precinct.

“Hey, Vando. Yes, it’s date night. I know. Well your captain is down for the count. … No, she’s not going to be in tomorrow. … Yeah. Can you take care of it? … I know! It’s a rarity. … No way, I’m blaming you! What kind of detective are you, anyway? … Yeah, yeah. You are the best kind. Alright. …Thank you, Servando. … I will. Bye.”

The next is to J’onn. He doesn’t answer, so she just leaves a quick voicemail saying that she probably won’t be in tomorrow, but to call her if there’s an emergency.

Then she calls Kara again, “Hey.”

“How is she?”

“Sleeping.”

“That’s good. I got that soup she likes and her bike is in the garage.”

“I saw. Thank you. You’re the best.”

“I know,” she laughs.

Alex rolls her eyes, but grins, “How are the kids?”

“Fine. The girls finished her homework and we’re getting ready to watch a movie before bed.”

“Ok. Give them all hugs and kisses for me.”

“I will, Alex.”

“I love you, Kara.”

“Love you too.”

She checks the time, 7:30PM. It’s still early. She starts gathering up the things she needs to take into the living room.

Over a decade into their relationship, and this part is comes easily: taking care of Maggie. Although it always has. She knows her better than she knows herself.

She also knows she’s a stubborn sick person. She refuses to take medicine, unless you actually put it in her hand. She will say she’s fine, until you force her to lay down. And unless she thinks she’s highly contagious, she refuses to stay in bed and insists on being on the couch so she doesn’t miss anything. She’s adorably frustrating.

She changes into her own t-shirt and sweatpants, then heads back to the living room with medicine, a pillow, and pajamas for Maggie.

She dumps it all on a chair, and gets a glass of water. Then she gently brushes the hair back from Maggie’s face, “Mags? Babe?”

Maggie shifts, and groans, and shuts her eyes tighter.

Alex’s heart breaks, “Hey, I need you to take these. It’ll help you get better.”

Maggie waves a hand at her and Alex rolls her eyes.

“That wasn’t a request, Maggie.”

She lets out a noise that’s combination of a sigh and a groan and a whine. But she reaches out her hand and Alex takes it and gently helps her into sitting up. She cracks one eye open to take the glass of water and down the pills, handing it back to Alex with the saddest looking face she’s maybe every seen. Alex’s heart feels like it’s being crushed inside her chest.

“What can I get you? Kara brought you soup. Or I can make you tea?” but Maggie shakes her head. Alex kisses her forehead again, “My poor baby…”

“Sit here.” she mumbles.

“Ok.” And Alex knows this well, too. She sits on one end of the couch and stretches her legs out on either side of Maggie. Maggie lays down between her legs, with her head resting on Alex’s stomach. Nothing about this arrangement seems comfortable to Alex, but it somehow is to Maggie, and that’s all that matters.

Maggie closes her eyes again, and Alex drifts off to sleep not long after, running her hand through Maggie’s hair.

…

What seems like a moment later, she’s startled awake by the loud sound of the Spice Girls “Stop” echoing through the house.

She reaches for her phone on the table to silence it before Maggie wakes up. She checks the time, 10:37PM. They’ve been asleep longer than she thought.

She has a missed call from Kara.

Her legs are painfully pinned down by her sleeping wife, and she considers trying to get up, but it seems like a bigger hassle. She turns down the volume on her phone and calls her sister back.

“Hey Alex. I’m sorry to call so late.”

She covers her mouth and tries to whisper as low as she can, “It’s ok. What’s up?”

“How’s Maggie?”

“Still sleeping.”

“Good.”

“Kara? Is that why you called?”

“Well…no.”

“What’s going on? Are you ok? Are the kids ok?”

“We’re all ok. But—”

“Mama!” the cry cuts off Kara, and Alex sighs.

“Sorry, Alex.”

“That’s ok. Put her on.”

“Mama?” the little voice whimpers.

“What’s wrong, my Lainey bug?”

“I wanna come home.”

A knife straight through her heart. “You will, sweetie. But not tonight. Your Mommy’s sick, and if you come home, then you’ll get sick too.”

“I don’t care.”

“Yes you do. You’ll miss your field trip to the zoo.”

That seems to make her reconsider. “You come here.”

“I can’t, baby. I have to take care of Mommy.”

“But…” she trails off and Alex can picture her bottom lip quivering very clearly in her mind.

“Is hippo with you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You make sure to tuck him in really good, ok? So he doesn’t get chilly.”

“Ok.”

“I love you, Elena. And you’re going to be home before you know it. And I bet Aunt Kara will make you chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.”

“Promise?”

Alex isn’t sure which part she’s promising, but she knows everything she said is true. “I promise. Hey bug, can you give the phone to your Aunt Kara real quick?”

“Ok.”

“I love you, Lainey.”

“Love you too, Mama.”

“Alex?”

“Hey. Is Gertie awake?”

“Uh…I don’t think so.”

_Bummer._ That would help calm Lainey down, but it’s not fair to wake her up for this. “Ok. Well—”

“Al, give it here.” Maggie’s hand reaches up for the phone, and Alex isn’t even sure when she woke up. She didn’t notice. But she hands the phone over, and bends down to kiss her wife’s forehead—grateful it feels much less warm than it did a few hours ago.

“Hey Kara, give Lainey the phone?”

“How are you feeling?”

“Like my head is on fire.”

“Ouch.”

“It’s not great.”

“Get some rest.”

“Trying. My Triumph still in one piece?”

Kara laughs, “Yes. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Thank you.”

“Any time.”

“Mommy?”

Maggie sits up, laying up higher on Alex’s chest, and Alex is grateful to be able to move her legs a little.

“Hi bug. I miss you.”

“I wanna come home.”

“I know. I’m so sorry baby. But I need you to stay there. It’s all my fault. I got sick.”

Somehow making it Maggie’s fault changes Lainey’s voice, “It’s ok. I hope you feel better.”

“Thank you. Hearing your voice sure helps. I’m feeling better already. I’ll be good as new when you come home tomorrow.”

“Ok.”

“I might need your help though, do you think you can do me a favor?” She’s probably nodding, but Maggie can’t tell, “Is that a yes, bug?”

“Yes.”

“Can you think of a good bedtime story? I can’t think of one, but I think it would really help me feel better.”

“Space goblins!”

Alex heard that through the speaker, and both of them laugh. Of course space goblins.

“That sounds perfect. You want to ask your Aunt Kara if she can tell it to us?”

She can hear Lainey muttering to Kara, and she puts the phone on speaker and slides it onto the coffee table.

“How do you feel, babe?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” she smirks.

Alex laughs as Maggie burrows further into her side and closes her eyes. She tugs the blanket up higher and rubs her back, “Oh yeah. The picture of perfect health.”

“Mmhmm.”

Kara’s voice pops through the phone, “Space goblins? Alright, goober. Once upon a time…”

Five minutes later, Maggie is definitely asleep. Alex fights to stay awake while her sister weaves some tale about space goblins and intergalactic pizza heists and black holes and somehow—she wasn’t paying too much attention, apparently—a wizard and a giraffe.

Ten minutes later, Kara’s voice stops for almost a full minute. When she comes back, Alex has the phone to her ear, “Goodnight, Alex.”

“Night, Kara. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

…

Maggie wakes up the next morning in her bed, in a sweatshirt and shorts, and—she peers down underneath her sweatshirt—without a bra on.

She laughs to herself and pads slowly to the kitchen, to what smells like coffee and waffles. Alex is sitting at the table with a mug of coffee, still in her sweats, looking like she probably didn’t get much sleep.

“I’m pretty sure I wore a bra to date night.”

Alex looks up from the newspaper with a grin, “Oh, you did.” She takes Maggie in her arms and pulls her onto her lap with a kiss, “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Better.”

Alex feels her forehead and seems to confirm Maggie’s answer, “You look better. Your fever seems to be gone.”

“We’re just going to skip over the fact that my bra is also gone?”

Alex laughs, “Uh, _you_ are responsible for that.”

“I think I’d remember…”

“After I hung up with Kara, I carried you to bed. That was probably…11 o’clock? Then at 3AM, you bolted awake and started tearing off all your clothes.”

Maggie buries her head in her hands, laughing, “Ok, maybe I vaguely remember that. I thought that was a dream.”

“Nope. Scared the crap out of me, so thank you for that.”

“Sorry,” she giggles.

Alex kisses the dimple on her cheek, “It’s alright.”

Maggie looks up at the clock, 9AM, “Al! You let me sleep this late!” She jumps up before Alex can stop her, “I have to get to the precinct!”

“Hey! Wait—” She grabs her hand and Maggie freezes mid-panic, “I called Servando last night. He took care of it. They know you’re not coming in today.”

Maggie takes a deep breath and runs her hand through her hair, “Well…good. Ok. Thank you.” She laughs, “I guess that’s payback for scaring you earlier.”

Alex smirks, “Sure. Now we’re even.”

Maggie comes back to the table and sits next to Alex, “Did the kids get to school ok?” then she remembers last night, “Oh. Little Lainey. Is she ok? Poor bug.”

“She’s ok. Lena sent me a picture this morning. All of them were stuffing their faces with chocolate chip pancakes. They’re fine.”

“Good. That’s good.” She frowns at Alex, “Sorry about date night.”

Alex shrugs, “Life happens, Mags. We’ll do it another day.”

Then Maggie’s eyes glitter and she grins with both dimples, dropping her voice low, “Um…so are _you_ going to work today?”

Alex grins, _mischievous little…_ “Nope.” She shakes her head slowly, and already, she knows what Maggie’s trying to do.

Her wife walks up behind her, slipping her hands down over her shoulders and kissing her neck, “You know what would _really_ make me feel better?”

Alex tries to remember to breathe, “What…uh…what’s that?”

She peppers kisses between her words, “A long…hot…bath.”

“That—that could probably help. Yeah.”

“You think so?”

“Mmhmm. Professional opinion. I _am_ a doctor, you know?”

Maggie’s voice drops lower, “I _did_ know that, Doctor Danvers.” She pulls her hands from Alex’s shoulders and walks slowly down the hall, toward their bedroom.

Alex watches her go, and without Maggie’s hands—and her mouth—so close, she has a little more resolve. Maggie looks over her shoulder and stops when she realizes Alex hasn’t followed her.

She pouts, “Aw, come on, Ally…”

Alex shakes her head, “You need _rest_ , Mags. And this… _god_ it’s tempting. And you know it is…jerk.”

Maggie smirks.

“You _really_ need to rest, babe.”

She thinks on it for a moment, then grins that wicked grin, and Alex knows she’s already a goner, “Well I’m taking the bath either way…andif you come with me…I promise to stay in bed all day.”

Alex’s stomach flips. _Christ_. “All… _all_ day?”

“Mmhmm.”

“You promise?”

“Cross my heart…”


	5. Saturdays

“What do you think?”

Kara almost cries, “No. Nope. Undo it.”

Lena’s ushering their three-year-olds into the kitchen. They’re in matching, pale pink tights and leotards, with little pink slippers, and their blonde curls pulled into tiny, messy buns.

She kisses a tear off of Kara’s cheek and wraps an arm around her waist, “They’re growing up.”

“Too fast. Make it stop.”

Lena laughs, “I’m not sure I can do that, love.”

“Can you try?”

“For you? Anything.”

“Thank you.”

“Mama! Watch!” Audrey looks up with her big green eyes, until both Kara and Lena are looking at her.

She whips her arms around to give herself enough momentum to spin around, then quickly loses her balance, and falls right on her butt—giggling the whole time.

Her twin sister follows suit a half a second later, with the same result.

Lena and Kara laugh, “Very graceful.”

“Oh yeah. They’re naturals.”

Lena grabs her phone off the counter and snaps a photo of the twins, sending it off to Alex & Maggie.

> LENA: First ballet class!  
> ALEX: The cuteness!   
> ALEX: They're so grown up!  
> MAGGIE: AGREED.  
> LENA: Working on it.   
> LENA: Promised my wife I’d make them stop growing up.  
> ALEX: I’ll help you with that.  
> MAGGIE: Yes please.  
> MAGGIE: Then bring whatever it is to me ASAP.

Maggie shoots a quick photo of Gertie, who’s sitting behind her, up on the bleachers overlooking Lainey’s soccer game. She’s got a book open on her knees, wearing dark jeans, black high-top Chucks, and a military-green jacket that is way too big on her with the sleeves rolled up. Her dark curls tumble down past her shoulders, and she stole Maggie’s sunglasses.

She looks 8 going on 18.

Lena texts back instantly.

> LENA: Noooo.

She hands the phone to Kara to see.

> ALEX: OH MY GOD.   
> ALEX: My baby! :(   
> ALEX: Is that your jacket?  
> MAGGIE: It was cold this morning.  
> MAGGIE: I regretted it immediately.  
> LENA: She looks about five minutes away from borrowing the keys to your Triumph…  
> ALEX: KARA DANVERS YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH.  
> MAGGIE: You’re dead to me, kid.

Kara cracks up, and Lena takes her phone back to see what’s so funny.

She laughs too, “You’re not wrong.”

It pings a second later.

> MAGGIE: Someone felt left out.

The photo that follows is JJ sticking out his tongue and attempting to cross his eyes.

> ALEX: Oh good. At least we still have one child.   
> ALEX: Not sure who that teenager belongs to…  
> LENA: That face! <3  
> MAGGIE: Yeah…please thank your wife for that lesson.

Lena shows the picture to Kara, who laughs and promptly mimics the face her nephew is making. Lena snaps a picture of it and sends it back.

> ALEX: Perfect.  
> MAGGIE: Found your new Caller ID pic.

…

Around lunch time, Alex’s phone buzzes on the picnic table at the park. She opens it up, laughs, and hands it to Maggie next to her.

There’s a photo of both twins in the middle of the dance studio—Audrey in tears and Maddie grinning ear to ear.

> LENA: Ballet has a 50% approval rating.

Maggie laughs and types back on Alex’s phone,

> ALEX: :( I think ours was the same.  
> ALEX: She needs some ice cream to cheer her up!  
> LENA: You did not.  
> KARA: I’ll have some waiting at home! :)  
> LENA: I hate you.

Maggie laughs until her stomach hurts. Alex snatches the phone and rereads her texts.

“Mean.”

“Hilarious.”

Alex laughs and kisses her wife, “That too.”

…

About 3PM, Gertie is sitting in front of Maggie on a different set of bleachers while Maggie French braids her hair—now changed into a bright blue baseball uniform, with knee socks and cleats.

She finishes the second braid and her phone buzzes in her back pocket.

She picks up the matching blue hat next to her and hands it to her eldest daughter, who runs to the dugout to join the rest of her team.

> KARA: 100% approval rating on this mound of dirt.

The picture underneath is Audrey and Maddie, covered head to toe in the light brown dirt they use to fill the fields, both giggling.

JJ sees it over her shoulder and gasps, “Mommy! Where’s that?!”

She points behind her, behind the cluster of baseball fields, where Kara has taken the twins to play. All three of them needed to burn off some energy in the time between JJ’s t-ball game and Gertie’s baseball game.

He takes off at a run before she remembers he’d taken off his socks and shoes, and apparently—while she wasn’t looking—he’d also taken off his shirt. She just shrugs.

> MAGGIE: One half-naked boy coming your way.

Lena, Alex and Lainey climb up the bleachers, arms full from the concession stand. Maggie grins, realizing Lena hasn’t seen the last text yet.

“What are you smirking at?”

“You’ll see.”

Lainey sits down next to her, then Lena, then Alex. And Lena slides her phone out of her pocket as all three of theirs buzz again.

> KARA: Upgraded. 150% approval rating.

The photo that accompanies it shows JJ sliding down the hill on a broken-down box with Maddie on his lap, dust clouds forming on either side of them.

> MAGGIE: A pile of dirt wasn’t enough?   
> MAGGIE: You had to give him a sled?  
> KARA: Wasn’t me.  
> ALEX: You tell Mom she can drive him home.  
> KARA: She says you’re a buzzkill.  
> ALEX: Liar.  
> KARA: Maybe.  
> LENA: You’re in charge of baths tonight.  
> KARA: Everyones? Or…? ;)  
> ALEX: STOP.

Maggie sorts at the last text and Lainey looks at her, “What’s so funny?”

She quickly clicks on the picture of JJ so it fills the whole screen, “Your brother is sledding down the dirt mound back there.”

Lainey giggles and Maggie grins at her, “You want me to take you over there with them?”

She looks back at the dirt mound, then back at Maggie, “No thank you.”

Then she sees Gertie in the outfield and grins, “Can you braid my hair like G’s?”

“Sure thing.”

…

Towards the end of the game, another picture comes through, but everyone except Alex’s is on silent. She swipes it open.

> KARA: Twins.

It’s a picture of Maggie, eyes on the game ahead, grinning, with a Fruit-by-the-Foot running the two feet between her mouth and her knees. Lainey is sitting next to her, hair now braided, her brother’s backwards baseball cap on her head, but sitting the exact same way, with the exact same grin—right down to the dimples.

Alex doesn’t answer the text, but she catches Kara’s eye in the row below her and grins. She doesn’t have to say anything else.

…

They all go to Alex & Maggie’s house for dinner, but first—as requested—Kara bathes the twins. And also JJ.

With the kids now clean and changed, they eat dinner and settle in to the living room to watch a movie.

Halfway through, Alex snaps a picture of the twins, in matching pajamas, asleep on the floor between Lainey and JJ, looking so small again. She waits to send it, so no one’s phone disturbs the moment.

Not long after, Kara and Lena leave with their sleeping girls, Maggie is putting the kids to bed, and Alex’s is cleaning up the kitchen. Her phone lights up.

> LENA: Found your baby, Alex.

It's a picture of Gertie from earlier, in her yellow daisy nightgown, asleep on Kara’s chest. Alex’s heart melts. She types back.

> ALEX: Funny. I found yours too.

She sends the picture of the sleeping twins.

> MAGGIE: Nerds. :)

She laughs, and hears her wife giggling in their bedroom. She curls up into Maggie's side, and before she puts her phone away for the night, it glows one last time.

> KARA: Takes one to know one, sis. <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not saying this is the last because I've lied about that before. But the recent spoilers about this show are breaking my heart at the moment. 
> 
> It should make me *more* motivated to right the wrongs and write the wrongs (can't pass up a good pun. lol.) but it just makes me sad. 
> 
> So unless I happen to finish the one half-written fic that still exists on my laptop, this will probably be the last for a while. 
> 
> But I'll be reading, for sure. And watching, for now. 
> 
> I love you all. :)


	6. 3:17AM - Chapter 1 of 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because I like a little chaos, this is story is going to span a few chapters, and I'm keeping it in the middle of this work, because it's still in the Kids AU. 
> 
> This is gonna take us wayyy back to Sanvers Baby #1 as a newborn and coping with new parenthood and stressful jobs and such. 
> 
> It was getting too long to keep as one post, so apologies in advance for the confusion. I tried to make it clear in the chapter title and they'll all be posted right after each other, so at least there's that. ;)

The alarm clock next to her bed says it’s 3:17AM. 

She wakes up to the sound of crying, but not the crying she normally wakes up to. 

Not their newborn baby girl this time, but her wife. 

She tried to cover it up by turning the shower on, but Alex hears it. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes, and heads into their bathroom. She knocks gently—with no intention of waiting for permission—and pushes the door open slowly. 

The shower is on, and Maggie is sitting on the floor of the bathtub, knees to her chin, sobbing. 

She doesn’t even wait to take off her t-shirt before she climbs in behind her and wraps her arms around her tight. 

“Mags,” she whispers. She whispers her name and “I love you” and “I got you” until Maggie stops shaking, until her breathing evens out, until she’s run out of tears.

She doesn’t ask for an explanation and she doesn’t ask what’s wrong. It’s the thing that’s been wrong for weeks. The thing that in the quietest moments, in the middle of the night, knocks the wind right out of her and presses down on her chest until she can’t breathe.

At only seven pounds and eleven ounces, that tiny, pink bundle with big, brown eyes and dimples has changed everything.

It’s the thing that she loves more than anything in the world—that they both do. 

And it’s the thing she can’t shake every time she goes back to work—that they both can’t.

And Alex hated it more because it had been easier for her, and she couldn't figure out how to take this pain from Maggie.

Because J’onn had known. He’d known right away that Alex was different now. To everyone else, she was the same cutthroat agent he had trained: she was still exceptional in hand-to-hand combat, she could hit a target with better accuracy than any other agent, she would descend a helicopter in the middle of a war zone, or leap off the balcony knowing her sister would catch her.

But there was a half-second hesitation now. A half of a second where her mind thought back to her brand new daughter and she questioned whether she could walk into the line of fire if it meant not coming home.

She didn’t have to ask, and she was grateful for that.

She suddenly had more hours in the lab. More hours behind the computer. More hours training new recruits. More hours drawing up tactical plans. Less hours leading the team in the field. More hours leading them from the command center inside the DEO.

She’d taken a step to the side, and Vasquez had taken a step forward. 

She was also grateful that it was Vasquez, because she deserved it—and also because she never once looked at Alex like she was less-than because of it.

Their transition was flawless.

But for Maggie…it was flawed.

She didn’t have a boss that cared for her like a daughter. She didn’t have a boss who had lost his own children and would do everything in his power to make sure that she never felt that loss. 

Hell, her boss didn’t even have children. Or a wife. Or a husband. Or even the smallest hint of anything that resembled compassion.

Her captain expected perfection. He expected her to not flinch. He expected her to answer the phone at any and every hour—day or night—and pour over case files until her eyes were red. He expected her to stand sure-footed in the middle of a firefight, and stare at bodies surrounded by chalk lines like she didn’t suddenly see them all as someone else’s baby lying there still, and silent, and lifeless.

She rarely minded him before—he was a dick, but she hadn’t made it this far without knowing how to deal with someone like that. She didn’t want special treatment, she didn’t want to be coddled. She was struggling to find the work/life balance that she desperately needed, and some days...some days it broke her. She didn't know what she wanted.

The only thing she knew was that who she was six weeks ago was not who she was now. The second the doctor put her daughter into her arms her whole life changed.

Gertrude Kara Danvers had come into this world screaming, and her first cry tipped their whole world upside-down. Alex had stumbled, but she’d landed mostly on her feet—while Maggie was hanging on by her fingernails.

Their daughter had changed them both. She’d given them a love they couldn’t have described or even fathomed just six short weeks ago. 

Alex had been surprised at how similar it was to how she felt about Kara. She’d always known their relationship was different than typical sisters, but the science-side of her brain found it…interesting. It wasn’t exactly the same, of course, but she caught herself looking at Kara a little bit differently since. 

And—less surprisingly—she’d found herself thinking of her mother a little more fondly. She had a new sense of understanding, a new perspective on the decisions her mother had made her whole life.

But the only person Maggie ever loved that much was Alex, and this was nothing like how she loved Alex. She felt it stronger and deeper than she even knew was possible. 

And where it had bridged a gap between Alex and Eliza, it only reignited the fire of anger and resentment Maggie felt toward her own parents. If they felt about her even a fraction as much as she felt about her own daughter, she couldn’t understand how they did the things they did to her.

All of it was new, and raw, and emotional, and exhausting, and so, so… _much_. Too much.

Maggie would be fine, for days, weeks, and then seemingly out of nowhere, she wasn't. It was slowly crushing her, and that was slowly crushing Alex. 

A newly familiar cry cuts through the sound of the running water, and Maggie stands before Alex can stop her, “I got her.”

No matter what, no matter the weight on Maggie's shoulders, she never let it touch her daughter. Given the choice, she wouldn't let it touch Alex either, but Alex made it clear that she wouldn't let her make that decision for her.

She dries off and shrugs on a bathrobe while Alex tries to figure out how to piece her family back together.

When Maggie returns to their bedroom a few minutes later with their daughter in her arm, she stops. The room is empty.

“Ally?”

She goes to the last place she left Alex, and can’t help but grin at the sight in front of her.

Alex is still in the bathtub, but now the tub is full of water and bubbles and smells like lavender. Now the harsh overhead light is off, and is replaced by the soft glow of a few candles on the sink.

Alex doesn’t say anything—she just waits, watches. 

She watches her wife expertly hold their daughter while also slipping out of her bathrobe. Watches her carefully, quickly—but so, so gently—undress their daughter and press her close to her chest, skin-to-skin, to keep her warm. 

She watches as her whole world fits in the tiny space in front of her in their bathtub. She wraps her arms around her wife and she holds them together, refusing to let them fall apart.

...

At 6:30AM, Maggie’s back at the precinct, files fanned across her desk, laptop open, digging into their latest leads. She got maybe an hour of sleep last night, and she’s tired, but she’s more relaxed than she has been in the last month.

A case file slaps on her desk, sends the loose pages flying, and breaks her concentration. She almost yells—until a large Noonan’s to-go cup appears on top of it a second later. 

She glances up to the mountain of an officer that is Detective Servando Moreno.

He's a few years younger than her and looks like an active NFL linemen—and he's one of the best people she's ever met. They became fast friends when he transferred into her precinct a couple years back, and he was one of the few people let into the exclusive Super Fam. That's actually how he met his now-wife, Violet, who's an engineer at L-Corp—and has also since become one of the family.

“Vando, I appreciate the coffee, but if you’re asking for help on one of your cases, I’m going to throw it in your face.”

And with one snort, the mountain becomes a teddy bear, “A caramel soy latte with two extra shots? Not even on your worst day, Chief.”

He’s the only person who gets to give her a nickname, and he enjoys making sure everyone else knows it. She bites back a grin and glares between him and the file folder, taking the coffee slowly into her grasp.

He knows precisely how and when to push her buttons, and knows now is not one of those times. His voice softens, “Trust me.”

She does. With her life. He’s not her partner—she doesn’t have one—but he’s the closest thing to it. Her brother in arms. Her brother. 

He taps her desk and winks before walking to his own chair a few feet away. 

She waits until his back is turned before flipping open the folder. 

It’s a simple enough memo, standard within the department, it reads: _NOTICE OF YOUR UPCOMING CAPTAIN EXAMINATION._

She flips up the memo and there’s an application and three sealed, white envelopes underneath, with a yellow Post-It and Vando’s recognizable chicken scratch: _Study._ _I’m not doing all the work for you._

She almost spits her coffee all over the letters of recommendation. As it is, she nearly chokes. Then she picks up a paper clip to chuck at the back of his big, stupid, amazing, loving, wonderful, stupid, giggling head. 

He laughs harder. She fights the urge to cry.

She gathers all the documents and files on her desk—including the latest addition—and shoves them, and her laptop, in her bag. 

She pauses for a second and puts a hand on his shoulder. Neither of them acknowledge the tear rolling down her cheek. “This…I…Vando…” she can’t find the words to tell him how much it means to her.

He nods, his voice steady as ever, “You got this, Chief.”

She takes a deep breath and he doesn’t move until she does. She adjusts the bag on her shoulder and he turns back to his computer, “I’ll tell the Cap you’re working from home today.”

“Thank you,” is all she can manage.

“No sweat,” she can hear the smirk in his voice as she reaches the door, “And as soon as you catch up, I need your help with the Donavan case.”

She flips him off without even turning around, and can still hear him laughing halfway down the hall.

…

The first thing she wants to do is call Alex. 

Scratch that—the first thing she wants to do is cry. Then call Alex. Then—probably—cry again.

Instead, she sits in her police cruiser and stares. She stares down the street but sees nothing, her mind is too busy going over everything that just happened.

Captain. She could be a Captain.

She had been the Science Division's Sergeant for about a year. It was a small step above Detective, but she'd taken the opportunity when it'd presented itself. She wasn't a Lieutenant, but she didn't have to be. She  _could_ be a Captain. Technically.

It would be better hours. It would be better pay. She didn’t really care about that though—the pay. Better hours meant more time with her family, and _that_ mattered.

She could take over a whole department. She could be in charge of her own crew of officers. Of their training. Of how they treated the citizens of National City. 

She would have to leave the Science Division, but they were working on expanding it's reach anyway. By the time she became a Captain, she could start up a Science Division in her own precinct—if the budget allowed. With the amount of aliens in National City, the case load was quickly becoming too big for just the one unit anyway.

Someone was retiring too…or stepping down…she tried to remember the email she’d skimmed past a few weeks ago. The 5th? No, 12th. The Captain of the 12th Precinct was stepping down. Something about…politics? She wasn’t sure. She made a mental note to look that up later.

The 12th was closer to her and Alex’s new house. Not their neighborhood, but it was a neighborhood Maggie knew well. A decent, working class neighborhood with a large immigrant population—both from this planet and others. The captain who was stepping down had chosen only the best for her precinct, and that was a legacy Maggie could continue. No, _would_ continue.

If she passed, of course.

And got hired.

Suddenly every happy thought was overpowered by a nerve-wracking, terrifying thought.

The exam meant studying. A lot of studying.

On top of her case load that was already drowning her, and the newborn that required all of her and Alex’s attention—attention she was more than willing to give up, always—and a city that all-too-frequently found itself under siege by beings from other planets who wouldn’t stop now that Maggie no longer had time to care about their latest attempts at taking over the world and eliminating the human race. 

Except she did care. That’s why she has her job. That’s why she loves her job.

She presses her forehead to the steering wheel, and when someone raps on the passengers side window, they're met with the end of her handgun first, then her stare.

A nervous laugh floats through the window, but those blue eyes are still a little wider than usual, “Good day to be bulletproof…” she mumbles.

...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look...I tried to do some research on police rankings to figure this out, but to be honest, it was after I had done all the writing based on "Cop Knowledge from Television" with a heavy dose of "Things That Happened to Kate Beckett on Castle" (shout-out to the 12th precinct is 100% on purpose, yo ;) ) Sooo...I'm sure the actual way a person would go from Detective to Captain is *not* accurate, but just...bare with me, if you can? The way it happens is less important here than it just happening.
> 
> Even after research, if I would've changed it, I'm pretty sure it would be wrong anyway, so I just left it mostly as-is. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	7. 3:17AM - Chapter 2 of 4

“Jesus. Sorry, Kara. What—uh, what are you even doing here?”

She stutters and looks down, “I was…in the neighborhood?”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“As bad as you?” she laughs, and hops in the passengers seat without an invitation, tilting an open paper bag Maggie’s way, “Donut?”

“Sure,” she picks one out of the bag, and leans back in the driver’s seat, “Now what are you _actually_ doing here?”

Kara looks guilty, “Um…I was…coming to see you.”

“So Alex sent you to check on me,” it’s not angry, just matter-of-fact. She’s not surprised, given everything that happened last night.

Kara scoffs, “No! What? _No_.” She crosses her arms across her chest, “I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to worry about you.”

“Sorry. Of course you are, kid. I just—”

“You’re as dumb as she is sometimes,” Kara mumbles.

Maggie exhales, “Probably dumber.”

Kara sighs, “No, Maggie…” She puts a hand on her knee, “I stopped by to see my perfect niece this morning, and I noticed you were gone. Alex said you were already at work. But I left you well after midnight last night, and I know you still had to bring that guy in, and process all the paperwork, and I just…I figured you couldn’t have gotten a lot of sleep. And you probably skipped breakfast. So..” she waves the bag of donuts in Maggie’s face as proof of her good intentions.

And now Maggie feels worse. It’s been years, but she still has a hard time remembering that other people besides Alex are looking out for her—notice her. 

“Thank you, Kara.”

“Yeah…no problem.”

It’s almost a full minute of silence before either of them speaks. But Maggie knows something’s coming, because Kara’s not leaving. 

“Something else?”

Kara stares at her for a long time. Long enough that Maggie has to look away, and even when she looks back, Kara’s still staring, “Are you ok, Maggie?”

_Loaded question_ , she thinks. She shrugs, “I’m fine.”

Kara lifts an eyebrow, but her voice is sad, “Maggie, you’re my sister and I love you. And lately…you’re not fine. I know you have Alex, obviously. And I don’t know a lot about marriage or babies, but I do know quite a bit about you…and I know that it’s very likely that you’re going to try to fix whatever this is on your own.” 

Maggie opens her mouth to say something, but Kara holds up her hand. She’s not done yet.

“And that’s ok, if that’s what you need to do. But…I’m here for you too. Just like Alex is. And I’m not here because of Alex, I’m not here because she asked me to be. I’m here because you’re hurting and I want you to know that I see that. I see you. And if you need anything, you can talk to me. I want to help you. For _you_.”

Maggie doesn’t try to hide her tears now, but she does try to make herself stop so she can talk to Kara. She trusts Kara with her life, and loves her like a sister, but still…they’re not Alex and Kara. They’re relationship is a little more distant. She starts with the less personal problem.

“Servando gave me an application.”

“For what?”

“The captain’s exam.”

“Oh.”

“Is that a good ‘oh,’ or a bad one?”

Kara smirks, “Neither.”

She laughs a little, “Well…that’s kinda why I’m sitting here. I got excited and then…I started second-guessing myself.”

Kara considers it longer, “Do you want to be a captain?”

“I think so? I mean, I always thought, eventually I would. And when he handed me that application, instantly I felt like it would fix…a lot of what’s been going on lately.”

Kara looks concerned, and Maggie realizes she wouldn’t know what’s been going on lately, “Nothing bad, just…difficult. With the baby and going back to work, it’s been…difficult, is all. I’m working on it. We’re working on it.”

That statement bothers Kara, but it doesn’t seem like Maggie’s going elaborate, “Ok.”

“And apparently three people think I’m cut out for this, because there’s already letters of recommendation, and that’s…that’s really nice. The thought of being behind a desk most of the time is…kind of a bummer…but also a relief? And working more normal hours? Being home with my wife and kid more? That is all very appealing. It’s what Alex needed—what J’onn gave her—and it works for her.”

Kara thinks on that. It _was_ what Alex needed. She’d been ready to have Supergirl’s back in the field, but Kara knew that was because it was her out there, not because it’s where Alex wanted to be. She looks back to Maggie, “Would it work for you?”

She shrugs, “I don’t know. It could.”

“I think you’d be really good at it.”

“Thanks, I think I could be too.”

“Maybe it’s worth a shot?”

“Yeah…maybe…” Maggie thinks on it, and Kara thinks their conversation is over—but she’s pleasantly surprised when Maggie looks to her a second later, “It’s been hard…figuring all this out.”

“All…what?” Kara asks gently.

“How to be all of these people at once: myself, a cop, a wife, a mom. I’m a _mom_ , Kara. And all of that is amazing. It really is. But sometimes it feels like I’m losing the most important parts of each of those people. Sometimes I’m barely hanging on.”

_So this was the real problem_. Kara wasn’t sure what had been bothering Maggie, but actually…she can relate better than she’d thought she’d be able to. She laughs a little, “You know, this is a problem I am _very_ familiar with.”

Maggie raises her eyebrows, “Being a cop and a wife and a mom?”

Kara rolls her eyes, “ _Nooo_. Being more than one person.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t thought of it like that before. 

“For a long time, I wrestled with who I was. At first, I only had to be Kara Zor-El. Then I had to figure out how to be Kara Danvers. Then how to be Supergirl.” She looks back at Maggie, “The thing I started to realize, was I didn’t have to keep them separate.”

“That’s what I’m _trying_ to do. I’m trying to be them all…”

“Yes…and no. What I mean is, sometimes being the best mom is going to make you the best cop—because in that moment your going to think of someone as a human, not as a criminal. Sometimes being a great cop is going to make you a great sister, like it did…well, you know. You saved her, and that saved me. And sometimes being the best wife is going to make you the best mom—because feeling loved and wanted and—I will _forever_ deny I said this—kissed and…touched, all that is going to mean that your daughter knows what love looks like.”

And Maggie was crying before, but, “Dammit, kid…” she’s crying again.

Kara leans her head onto Maggie’s shoulder, because this is a lot—even for them—and Maggie’s more comfortable if the attention’s not so focused on her.

“I’ve made a lot of mistakes as Supergirl, and as Kara Danvers, and as Kara Zor-El, but most of them aren’t mistakes for me, as a whole person. There are times when making the decision to save the world meant being a terrible sister. Or saving my girlfriend meant not being the best superhero for National City. But you make peace with that. You don’t have to be the best of all of them at once, because they’re all you. And it may take a while, but that balance will come more and more naturally.”

“Like it does for Alex…” she adds.

“Yeah, well…where do you think she learned it?”

“Where she learned it? Or you did?” Maggie laughs.

“Either way…” Kara smirks.

“When did you get so sage?”

Kara shrugs, “Comes with age, I hear.”

She grins, “I must’ve missed some of it.”

“Well, you’re not _actually_ older than me, you know that, right?”

Maggie musses her hair, “I am on this planet, kid.”

Kara laughs, “You have a kid of your own now, so you can finally stop calling me that.”

“Nope.”

Kara sighs, “It was worth a shot.” She sits up and takes one last look at her sister, “Can I have a hug before I go?”

Maggie grins, “Of course you can, kid.”

Just as Kara pushes open the door of the cruiser, Maggie’s phone rings, “Danvers.” 

Then Maggie grabs Kara’s arm and she freezes, halfway out the door. She repeats the words Kara needs to hear, but she knows Kara can hear all of it, “Fire at the middle school. Possible aliens? How many? Ok. I’m four minutes out.”

“See you there.” 

Kara takes off without another word, calling it in to the DEO on her way.

…

Alex runs from her lab to the command center.

“What happened?” she demands.

J’onn’s stoic as ever, “Group of aliens has taken over the middle school. School’s out for the day, but Supergirl went to shut it down and we lost contact with her. Could be her comms out, or it could be—”

“Worse,” Alex finishes.

He sighs, “Something else.” 

He walks with Alex to the monitors they have pulled up of the scene, “Agent Vasquez took a team to the area, and Mr. Schott is trying to bring her tracker online as we speak.”

“Ok. I’ll meet them.”

“No.”

Alex’s fists clench, “What do you mean, ‘no?’”

J’onn softens, just barely, and motions for her to step to the side of the room with him. When they have more privacy, he continues, “Alex…you need to be here.”

“J’onn, that is my _sister_.”

“I know.”

“And I—” He holds up a hand, and as angry as she is, she still stops.

“Alex, this is the job. This is _your_ job, now. You have to trust Agent Vasquez. You have to let her do this. Your job is here. Do what you can from here.”

“And if I won’t?”

“You have to.”

She paces a few times, but it’s not enough. He needs her to understand, “Alex, what you’re feeling right now? I feel that every single time you or your sister step out that door. Every _single_ time.”

That makes her stop. Makes her look.

“I know how skilled you both are, and I trust you with my life, and the lives of everyone in this city—but that voice in your head that says ‘It should be me,’ doesn’t go away. It probably never will. You have to ignore it.”

She sits with that information for a few seconds, “How?”

“By doing everything you can, right here. Just like I do.”

…

Servando gathers information as Maggie speeds through National City. She learns the middle school is under attack, but school’s out, so they don’t think there are any kids. They haven’t been able to identify all the aliens on site, but Supergirl is there already, and then…she wasn’t.

They pull up next to a black, unmarked armored vehicle, and Maggie knows exactly who it belongs to.

“Sawyer. Moreno.”

Well, she thought she knew who it belonged to, “Vasquez?”

She can’t help but notice the inflection in Maggie’s voice, and she smirks, “Expecting someone else?”

“I—well, yes. No offense.”

“None taken. It’s new for all of us.”

“Where is she?”

“HQ.”

“And Supergirl?”

“Inside, we think.”

“You think?”

“We’re pretty sure.”

“Back up?”

“Ten on the perimeter. You?”

Servando finally speaks, “Present.”

“That’s it?”

“More on the way.”

It’s almost an eyeroll, “…great.”

“Did you think the school was going to burn down and NCPD wouldn’t notice?”

“No, just wish we had a little more time to not worry about cover stories.”

“Can’t help you there. Where do you want us?”

Vasquez hesitates.

“Agent Vasquez, I’m not leaving. We can do the jurisdiction song and dance another time. That is my _sister_ , I’m already here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

She rolls her eyes, “You really are a Danvers aren’t you?”

Maggie smirks, “Shut up.”

Vasquez sighs and pulls two earpieces out of a pocket on her tact vest, “Follow me.”

…


	8. 3:17AM - Chapter 3 of 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did I plan on writing an action sequence when I started this? Nope. Not at all. 
> 
> Is that what I just did? Pretty much. 
> 
> I even did research for this. It’s not perfect, I’m not a scientist, but I tried, y’all. :)

 

“Schott. Where are we with Supergirl’s comms?”

Alex’s voice is no-nonsense, and he responds the same way, “Nowhere. It’s gone. But her tracker’s back up and it says she’s at the school.”

“Keep an eye on it, and start gathering intel on whatever kind of aliens we’re dealing with.”

Winn falters, they have neither eyes nor ears inside the building, “…how?”

“Figure it out.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She looks up at the monitors and assesses the situation. They’ve got readouts on Supergirl’s tracker, and all seems normal. Body cams from the other agents show part of the school in flames, but nothing that looks alien-related. From the outside, it looks like a normal fire.

“Agent Vasquez?”

“Assistant Director.”

“What’s happening down there?”

“Not much. Fire at the school is burning pretty hot. No eyes on Supergirl or any hostiles yet, but we’re about to head inside. NCPD’s on their way. Probably the fire department too. Sawyer and Moreno are here and on comms.”

“Of course they are.”

A familiar voice fills the room, “Hey there, Assistant Director.”

“Sawyer.”

Maggie can’t help herself, “It’s Danvers to you.”

Alex grins, “Nice try.”

Maggie slowly became Danvers just about everywhere since they’d gotten married, including her own precinct, but not at the DEO. Old habits die hard, and it was too confusing—especially considering most of the time she was around, she was right next to Alex. Here she is still Sawyer.

Winn takes over, “You’re correct on the fire, Agent Vasquez. Between the temperature and the residue in the atmosphere, you’re looking at something closer to a Class D fire.”

“I’ll alert NCFD,” Maggie answers.

Alex looks at him, “Metal? You’re sure?”

“I didn’t start the fire, I just report the facts.”

“What kind of alien has that effect?”

“I…I don’t have those facts yet.”

J’onn stares him down, “Get them.”

“Yes, sir.”

At the middle school, Maggie follows Vasquez and her team into the building. They enter the side that’s not currently on fire, and start peeling off in pairs down different halls.

Vasquez and Maggie are headed toward the back of the school and what looks like the source of the fire, as other agents are calling out, “clear.” No one’s reported seeing Supergirl—or anything else for that matter.

They turn the corner toward the school gymnasium, and Vasquez opens the door just a sliver. The heat and smoke from that alone makes them both cough. She shuts the door and turns back to Maggie, shaking her head.

“What?”

Vasquez pushes her earpiece, “I’ve got eyes on Supergirl. She’s in the gymnasium.”

Alex’s voice comes through, “And the aliens?”

“Two purple…things. Humanoid, but with wings. Seem immune to the flames and the freeze breath, but she’s stronger. They’re emitting some kind of white fire.”

“Can you assist?”

“We might be able to get in, but I don’t know how we can help.”

Maggie had taken a look while Vasquez was reporting the scene to Alex, “We’re gonna have to figure something out, and fast. There are kids in the gym.”

…

Alex looks at J’onn and then Winn. She tries not to think of those kids like her kid right now. She has to take a second to refocus, and J’onn takes the lead.

“Mr. Schott, we need to know exactly what that fire is so we can put it out.”

“On it, sir.”

He puts a hand on Alex’s shoulder, talking low enough so no one else can here, “They’re going to be fine, Alex. You’ll get them out.”

She hopes he’s right. “Vasquez, Sawyer, where are the kids?”

Maggie answers, “They must be in the locker room or something. Supergirl’s engaged with the aliens inside the gym, she seems to be holding her own, but she hasn’t figured out how to put out the fire. I saw at least two kids peek out from a doorway on the opposite side from where we are now.”

“Can you get to them?”

“Maybe.”

Vasquez opens and closes the door again, “Not without being seen.”

Alex considers that information, “Standby.” She looks back up at the monitors, “Winn, pull up blueprints of the middle school. We need another way inside that gym.”

He punches a bunch of keys until a blueprint pops up, but—unfortunately—there’s no other way in.

Alex shakes her head, “Not even windows?”

Winn thinks hard, “It’s been a while, but if I remember middle school correctly, the only windows are the thick, glass blocks. Nothing that opens.”

Alex rubs her forehead, “Who does that?!”

Maggie laughs, “People who don’t want middle school kids ditching class. Not all of us were nerds, Danvers.”

Alex opens her mouth to scold her wife, but Winn cuts her off.

“Magnesium!”

“Schott?”

“Magnesium. The fire’s heat signature closely resembles magnesium.”

Vasquez and Maggie share a blank look, “Director?”

She processes that information out loud, “Makes sense, magnesium burns white hot. Hotter than most fires. It’s also a metal.”

“Even I remember that from chem class, but I don’t remember how to put it out.”

“Not water!” Winn and Alex yell it at the same time, and Maggie laughs again.

“Nerds.”

Alex starts muttering all the options to herself, “It burns hot, but quickly. The flames should go out right away—although, not in this case. The aliens just make more… You need a chemical fire extinguisher.”

Maggie looks to Vasquez, “Great, got any of those laying around?”

Vasquez ignores that and talks to Alex, “Is there another way?”

She thinks on that, “Sand.”

Winn agrees, “Yeah. Sand...sand could work.”

Vasquez tries to hold back any sarcasm, “Where are we going to get sand?”

Alex looks to J’onn, but he has no answer.

“The…beach?” Winn supplies. It takes everything inside Alex not to slap him upside the head.

A deeper voice echoes through the DEO and the earpieces, “The baseball field.”

“Moreno?”

“The dirt on the infield is about 70% sand—give or take.”

Alex and Winn consider this, but exchange a shrug. “That should work,” she says.

Vasquez looks back into the gym for a second, “Great. Now how do we get thousands of pounds of dirt into the middle school gymnasium?”

“We don’t,” Maggie answers. “We take the fire to the baseball field.”

Vasquez eyes her, “You’ve got a plan?”

“A pretty stupid one, yes.”

Alex’s voice is in Maggie’s ear right away, “Sawyer…” she warns, but the voice is less Assistant Director Danvers, and mostly her concerned wife.

Maggie doesn’t answer to the DEO, so she doesn’t care about staying professional in this moment, “I’ve done stupider things, Alex. It’s gonna be fine. But I can’t have you in my head right now. I love you.”

“Mag—”

But Maggie doesn’t wait for a response. She can’t. She hands the earpiece to Vasquez, “Get this to Supergirl, and help her get the aliens out of the school and to the field. I’ll get the kids.”

“We’ll help you.”

“No. You guys handle the extra-normal, it’s kind of your thing. I’m sure Moreno’s on his way, and the other fire and police should be here soon. We’ll get the kids out. You worry about the aliens.”

“You’re right. This is a stupid plan.”

“Got a better idea?”

“No.”

Maggie puts a hand on her shoulder, “It’s fine.”

“You better get out of here in one piece or your wife will murder me, and then fire me.”

“Nah,” Maggie grins, “She’ll be too busy murdering me.”

Vasquez takes a deep breath, “Ready?”

Maggie nods. They push open the door to the gym and stay close to the ground. Vasquez stays near the door, and Maggie works her way along the wall of the gym as quickly as she can, but without drawing attention to herself. Luckily, Supergirl seems to be keeping both aliens distracted.

Halfway through the room and Maggie is boiling from the inside out. Her lungs are burning, and she’s hotter than she’s ever been in her life. Suddenly white flames shoot in front of her, and she jumps backward just in time.

Vasquez yells from the doorway, “Supergirl!”

That distracts the purple aliens long enough for Maggie to take off at a run and close herself into the locker room.

She goes to the one that she didn’t see kids in first, because she knows there are people in the boy’s locker room, but she needs to make sure there aren’t any in the girl’s locker room. Thankfully, there aren’t.

She slips quickly out of one door and into the other. She puts her back to the door and is facing about ten preteen boys and one girl—way more than the two she thought she had. She keeps her voice casual, “Hey, kids. Sergeant Danvers, NCPD. How about we get out of here, yeah?”

They’re mostly in shock, and they just nod blankly back at her.

“Is anyone else here?”

One, very tall boy with deep brown eyes and a close-cropped haircut steps forward, “No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Coach lets us use the gym sometimes after school to shoot some hoops and…stuff...”

Judging by the rag-tag group of kids in front of her, she can guess what they’re doing here. They all look relatively clean and healthy, but their clothes are a little too worn—no new shoes, no new jeans, no new backpacks. They’re probably doing the same thing she did in high school, “And not go home?” Maggie guesses.

“Yeah. Sometimes,” he mumbles. “But it’s just us. It’s always just us.”

She hears a loud crash and opens the door to see what happened. Vasquez must’ve gotten to Supergirl, because everyone is gone, and there’s a giant hole in the ceiling. The fire flares up as the fresh air hits the room, but it dies down quickly, just like Alex said it would.

Maggie sighs in relief, but a terrible groan comes from the gym and panic sets in: the whole thing is coming down, and probably quickly.

“Danvers!”

She pushes the door open further, and Moreno’s on the opposite side of the gym, but chunks of the ceiling are still falling, and the bleachers stacked against the back wall look dangerously close to tipping over and collapsing.

She shouts across the smoldering gymnasium, “Vando! I’ve got eleven kids here. We’re gonna start heading your way!”

“Copy that. Hurry, Danvers. We don’t have much time.”

She looks up at the tall kid. He seems the most alert and least in shock right now, “Can you help me?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“What’s your name?”

“Alex.”

A cold fist tightens inside her chest, _of course it is_. “Alright,” it’s hard for her to even say it out loud, “Alex. I need to go first so we can follow a safe path. Can you be last in line and keep us together? It’s ok if you can’t.”

He stands a little taller. She didn’t think it was possible. “Yes, ma’am.”

She wonders fleetingly if he’s a military kid, or just naturally good under pressure, “Great.”

She looks to everyone else, “You hear that? We’re going to stay as best we can in a line, and you’re all going to follow me out of here to the other side, to my partner Servando. We should be safe after that.”

The kids all nod, but they’re still pretty speechless.

They file out into the gymnasium, and it’s somehow worse than it was before. The creaks and groans from the building sound ominous, and even though the fire is gone, it’s still sweltering inside. Her and Vando make eye contact and survey the gym for the path of least resistance.

Unfortunately, it’s a 50/50 shot: cut through the center of the gym, and hurdle chunks of the roof and hope no more falls—or—stay close to the edge, and hope the teetering bleachers don’t collapse until they’ve made it across.

Another huge piece of the ceiling drops and makes the decision for her: bleachers it is.

“Alright, you all ready to go?”

They look between each other and back to her, but no one disagrees. She moves as quickly as she can, but slow enough that she won’t get too far ahead of them. Halfway across the gym, the bleachers shake, and she stops. She starts pushing the kids one-by-one toward Vando, with her eyes glued to the towering pile of wood and metal that could come crashing down any second.

She’s so focused on the bleachers, that she doesn’t see the chunk of ceiling fall—but Alex does. She’s pushing one of the last kids toward Vando when two hands grip her arm and yank her backwards. She yelps out in pain before she figures out what’s happening, but her scream is drowned by the crash of debris that hits the floor right where she had been standing.

Alex’s eyes are wide, and it’s the first time he looks panicked, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, I—”

She cuts him off, and tries to keep her voice even and calm, even as her shoulder is searing in pain—she’s pretty sure it’s dislocated, “You saved my life, Alex. I wasn’t looking up, but I’m really glad you were.”

“Are you ok?”

“I’ll be fine.” But the debris knocked into the bleachers, and they’re definitely going to fall. Her voice is hard now, “Run, Alex. You need to run, right now. Those bleachers are coming down.”

It pauses for half a second, but then he takes off at a sprint. She’s only a step behind him, but she knows she’s not going to clear it.

She shoves him toward safety as hard as she can with her good arm, and is slammed to the ground a second later as a familiar voice yells out, “Maggie!”

She doesn’t wake up for hours.

...


	9. 3:17AM - Chapter 4 of 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Made it to Chapter 4. Woo! A completed story. It feels so official. 
> 
> Not the conclusion I had in mind originally, but I’m ok with it. 
> 
> Happy reading! :)

The clock on the wall says it’s 3:17AM.

She wakes up to the sound of crying.

Her eyes adjust to the dimmed lights in the med bay. To her right, Lena and Kara are asleep on one of the beds. Lena’s head is on Kara’s chest, her arm draped across her waist.

In another chair between Kara’s bed and her own, Eliza is curled up and asleep.

She slowly turns to her left, and sees her wife pacing outside the glass wall, gently bouncing their baby girl. They’re both crying. Although in this moment, it seems like Alex is crying harder.

She reaches for the oxygen mask on her face, and tears spring to her eyes when she her left arm moves—which, turns out, she can’t move very far, because it’s ace-bandaged pretty securely to the rest of her body. 

Everything starts to come back to her: the fire, the kids, her shoulder— _Alex. What happened to Alex?_ She tries to speak, but her voice is gravel. 

“Alex,” her lungs ache and it’s barely above a whisper.

Her wife can’t hear her, but Eliza is awake in an instant. She gently takes off the oxygen mask that Maggie is pulling at, and wipes a tear from her cheek, “Hey, you’re ok, sweetheart. She’s here. She’s right outside. She’s with the baby. I’ll get her—”

Maggie shakes her head, “No. _Alex_. Where…? He—” She hopes he’s ok. She shuts her eyes tight, but she can’t remember what happened.

“Oh. The boy? He’s fine. He’s home and he’s safe. Everyone’s ok, Maggie.”

She takes a deep breath, “Good. And Kara?” Every word scrapes her throat, but she needs to know. She needs to know what happened.

“She’s fine too. Exhausted, but she’s fine.”

Maggie looks at Kara again in the bed next to her, and only now does she realize that they’re simply asleep. None of the machines around the bed are hooked up to Kara or even on.

“Alex…Al,” she asks again. 

Eliza smiles softly at her, “Your wife?”

Maggie nods and laughs at this weird guessing game they’ve gotten into—and _oh god_ , the pain through her side makes her stop laughing instantly. Her whole left side feels bruised, and she has to actively try to keep all the muscles around her left shoulder relaxed.

“I’ll get her. You rest, sweetheart.” Eliza leaves the room and exchanges a few words with Alex. Maggie watches as Alex tries not to break into a run on her way to her bedside.

“Maggie…” She doesn’t even know what to say. She’s just grateful that she’s here, and she’s breathing, and she’s healing, and she’s here. She’s right here. She bends down to kiss her forehead.

Maggie looks up at her, and there’s more than pain on her face, “I’m sorry.” She reaches for Alex’s free hand, and, thankfully, Alex takes it.

“Oh…we’re gonna have a very long conversation about how stupid you are later, but right now…” a few tears run down her cheeks, “I can’t be mad at you right now.”

“Sorry,” Maggie says again. It’s the only thing that feels right.

“I know.”

“Come sit?” she looks down at the little space on the bed next to her.

Alex raises an eyebrow, “ _How,_ babe?” she laughs. The bed is so tiny. There’s no way.

But that laugh…that perfect laugh, and her perfect wife, and their perfect little girl asleep in her arms—it’s makes her cry. The tears start to fall, and Alex pulls her close to her chest.

“Mags, hey…I’m sorry. I wasn’t laughing at you, I was…I love you, Maggie. I love you so much.” 

But Maggie shakes her head into Alex’s chest, “No…good tears, Al.”

Alex pulls away slightly and wipes another tear from Maggie’s cheek. “Good tears?”

“Yeah,” she grins through the tears. “I love you too. I love you both. It’s…” she takes another jagged breath, “It’s really good to see you.”

J’onn isn’t looking when he walks into the room, “Alex, I—Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll come back.”

Maggie waves him in, “Come in, J’onn.”

“Did you need something?” Alex asks.

He looks at Maggie first, “How do you feel?”

“Like I was crushed by a set of bleachers.”

He lets out a small laugh, “Yeah,” but his face gets more serious, “well, you’re lucky you didn’t take the brunt of that hit, because you might not be awake right now.”

She feels Alex’s hand tighten around hers, but she cocks her head at him, “What do you mean?”

“He means you owe me a bajillion potstickers,” a sleepy voice comes from the other side of the med bay.

J’onn and Alex laugh, and Maggie is still confused. She thinks back as far as she can. 

She remembers pushing the kid out of the way, and then the bleachers came down…and then she was here. But…no. _No._ Someone yelled. Someone called her name. But not “Danvers,” not “Sawyer,” not even “Chief,” _Maggie_. Someone had called out “Maggie.” It could only have been Kara.

It comes back to her slowly, but she remembers…the thing that slammed her into the ground wasn’t the tumbling bleachers, it was Supergirl. It was her sister.

Maggie pushes herself up slowly with her good arm—despite Alex’s protests—and it hurts like hell, but she looks at Kara lying there and she wants to cry again, “Thank you, kid.”

“Always,” she promises. And if Maggie wasn’t bruised and battered and tied down by wires, she would run right over to her and wrap her up in the biggest hug. 

Kara seems to understand what Maggie’s not saying. She gives her a small nod and a grin. She kisses the top of Lena’s still-sleeping head and closes her eyes.

“You should rest too, babe.”

Maggie looks up at her wife with a grin, “Yeah, probably. But the Director there looks like he needs you, and I need to see my baby girl. You may not fit on this bed with me, but I’m pretty sure she does.”

Alex rolls her eyes, but hands over their daughter gently. She puts her in Maggie’s good arm and kisses Gertie, then Maggie, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

“I love you, Al.”

“I love you too.”

…

By normal waking hours, Maggie’s put up enough of a fight—with a fair amount of help from Gertie, who refuses to sleep—that Alex finally relents and allows her to go home.

In the car, Maggie makes another request, and to her surprise, Alex agrees without hesitation.

When they pull in the parking lot, Alex watches Maggie get out.

“Will you come with me?”

Alex is a little surprised, “Sure.”

The three of them make their way to the building, and with a quick flash of her badge and conversation with the principal, they’re directed to the cafeteria.

She easily picks out the tallest kid in the room, walks up to him, and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Alex?”

The other kids around him are all familiar to her too, they’re some of the same kids from yesterday. She smiles at them, glad to see they all look ok. 

He turns slowly at the unfamiliar voice, but he grins when he sees her, “Hey, Sergeant.”

“Hi. How are you?”

“Fine.” He notices her arm in the sling, “I did that, didn’t I? I’m so sorry.”

She squeezes his shoulder, “Don’t be. You saved my life. This is nothing compared to what could’ve happened.”

He nods, but he doesn’t say anything. 

“I wanted to come and say thank you. I wanted to make sure you were ok. And all of you,” she looks to the rest of the kids sitting there, “are you all ok?”

She gets some nods in return, but Alex answers for most them, “Everyone’s ok, thanks to you.”

“And you.”

He shrugs, “I didn’t do anything.”

“You did. And I wanted to make sure you knew that.” She reaches behind her for her wife’s hand and tugs her to her side. “Alex, this is my wife, uh...well,” she laughs, “also Alex.”

“Hi,” she waves at him. 

“Hey.”

“Thank you for saving my wife. And Gertie’s mom. We’re both really grateful you were there.”

He sits a little straighter, “No problem.” He looks to Maggie again, “You’re a mom?”

“Yeah. Do I lose all my street cred?”

He laughs a little, “Maybe. But…it makes sense.”

She tilts her head at that, “Why?”

He laughs again, “Because that’s how you treated us. Like coach does. Like your own.” He pauses, “Like we matter.”

Alex wants to hug him instantly, but Maggie’s voice turns harder, “Stand up.”

He looks confused, but does as he’s told. She puts her one good arm on his shoulder, and looks right in his eyes, “ _You matter_.”

He nods, and she makes sure he hears it again, “You matter, Alex.” She looks over his shoulder at the others, “You all matter, do you hear me?”

She gets mumbles of “yes,” in return. She looks back to the impossibly tall 13-year-old that saved her life, “Good. Don't ever forget that. Now…can I have a hug?”

He doesn’t answer, but he grins and puts his arms around her, and makes sure not to put any pressure on her injured shoulder. She couldn't care less, she squeezes him tight—pain or no pain—he deserves it.

When they pull apart, Alex looks at him too, “You don’t even know me, but I would really like to hug you too…if that’s ok.”

He laughs and hugs her too, “I know you. Not like I can forget your name or anything.”

She smiles and hugs him tight. The bell rings for their next class and Maggie slips him her card, “You better get to class, but promise me you’ll call me if you need anything, ever. Ok?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She laughs, “I appreciate your impeccable manners, but you really can just call me Maggie.”

“Yes, Maggie.”

“Better,” she grins.

They watch the kids all shuffle off and she puts her arm around her wife, “Let’s go home, Al.”

…

By the time they get home, life has descended into a bit of chaos: Gertie is overtired and screaming, Alex is overtired and exhausted, and Maggie’s whole body is stiff—and she feel pretty useless, because it’s hard for her to help either her wife or her little girl with just one arm.

Alex is in the nursery, trying to put their daughter to sleep, and Maggie goes into their bedroom. She throws down her work bag, not caring that it spills all over the floor, just eager to change out of her soot-covered clothes from last night. 

She grabs a pair of sweats and curses to herself. She can’t even take off her own clothes, not with her arm like this. She kind of wants to cry, but she gets a better idea.

A few minutes later, she calls for help, “Alex? Can you come here please?”

As tired and stressed as she knows Alex is, she notes that when she walks into the room, she doesn’t complain or look even remotely mad that Maggie called her over. Maggie kisses her for that, and for so, so much more.

“Hey, I know you’re busy with the little jellybean, but I…I can’t change my own clothes,” she frowns.

Alex looks her over, “Right, of course not. Hang on, I’ll help you.”

Maggie kisses her again, “No. Well—yes, I will need you to help me. But, I had an idea?” she grins.

Alex tilts her head, just barely, “An idea?”

“Yeah.” Maggie takes her hand, and leads her to their bathroom.

Inside, the lights are turned off, and the tub is full of warm water and bubbles, and those same candles from yesterday are burning again.

Alex grins at her, and Maggie loves the way that grin still sends butterflies through her stomach and heat through her whole body. “So I needed to get out of these clothes, and you need to relax, and you know what? Gertie does too. What do you think?”

Alex takes a deep breath and Maggie can see some of the tension leave her body, “I think it’s the best idea you’ve maybe ever had.”

She laughs, “I don’t know if that’s a compliment or an insult, but I’ll take it.”

Alex kisses her, “Let’s go with compliment.”

An hour later, all three of them are clean and relaxed, and snuggled in bed in what Maggie loves—and sometimes still can't believe—has become their new normal—her wife tucked close into her side, and their little girl asleep between them both.

Alex eye catches sight of Maggie’s bag spilled in the corner, and she squints, “Hey Mags?”

“Hmm?”

“What’s that?”

Maggie’s eyes follow Alex’s, “Oh. Oops. I probably should’ve picked that up earlier.”

“No, not the mess. The…captains exam?”

Maggie looks up at her, “Oh…right. I never got a chance to tell you. Servando gave me that yesterday—god, was it only yesterday? Yesterday morning. Letters of recommendation and everything…” her voice trails off.

Alex kisses her cheek, “That’s amazing, babe! Congratulations.”

Maggie nods, but she doesn’t look as excited as Alex thought she would be, “Is it not amazing?”

Maggie thinks back to everything that happened in the last 24 hours. How helpless she felt, that application, the conversation with Kara…then the fire, and everything that went with it, “Um…I don’t know.”

“Ok…”

“I…I think I wanted it—or, I maybe  _wanted_ to want it? But I…don’t anymore.” She looks at her wife, “Are you mad?”

The confusion is evident on Alex’s face, “Mad? About what?”

“I should want this, Alex. And some of it…some of it I _do_ want. The normal hours, the office, being in danger less, being home with you and Gertie more…I want that.”

“But…?” Alex prompts.

“But…I’m not like you.”

And if Alex wasn’t confused before, she sure is now.

“You’re a scientist first, Alex. And yes, you’re one hell of an agent and a soldier and all of those things too, but first? First you’re a scientist. You can save the day—the world—with science. And I know that sounds stupid, but it’s true.

“I know it’s been tough for you to not be the first one kicking down the door, but even so, you’re still you. Yesterday, you weren’t even in the field, but you helped us. You and that big, incredible, nerdy brain of yours.”

Alex doesn’t really know what to say. Her wife’s not wrong. It has been hard for her to not jump at every threat, but even yesterday, after her initial reaction, and after the outcome—she was satisfied with the role she played. She knew she would’ve done the exact same things Vasquez had done, and the end result would have been the same.

“But me? I’m a cop. In crisis, and in moments like yesterday, I’m just a cop. My captain was most likely in his office during that whole thing. He probably dispatched extra teams and coordinated officers—but he was at the precinct. And that’s ok, that’s his job. We needed him there.”

Alex doesn’t interrupt, but Maggie doesn’t have to finish—because she gets it: Maggie couldn’t do that.

“I can’t do that.” 

When Maggie voices Alex’s thought, she can’t help it, she grins, “No, you couldn’t.”

“The only way I know how to help is being there—being inside that building, saving those kids. And sure, if I wasn’t there, someone else would’ve done it, but…I don’t know how to do that yet. I don’t know how to feel like I’m making a difference from inside an office.”

Alex wipes a tear from Maggie’s cheek, “That’s ok, Maggie.”

“I was so…lost. Before. Especially these last couple weeks. And now I realize, it wasn’t because I wanted something different, it’s because I _wanted_ to want it. And that application felt like the solution. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders…at first. I think that’s been eating at me the most: that I could be home with you both, and that as happy as that would make me, I would still be…I don’t know…”

“You wouldn’t be you.”

“I wouldn’t be me,” she agrees. “And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, because it seems ridiculous that I want to be there for our family every single moment, and also still feel the need to take a bullet for a complete stranger. I hate—”

“No.” Alex’s voice cuts through Maggie’s rambling, sharper and firmer than it had been a second ago.

“What?”

“No. Don’t hate that part of you, Maggie. Don’t hate any part of you. Every single part of who you are is important. And yes, I would prefer you didn’t take a bullet for a complete stranger—or anyone, quite frankly—ever again. While we’re at it, I would also prefer it if you didn’t stand under a set of crumbling bleachers.”

“Noted,” Maggie laughs.

“But I know who you are, Maggie—who I married. And having Gertie doesn’t change that, she just adds to it. We’re going to figure it out together. I don’t love the idea of you being in danger, ever, but you do it for the right reasons. I know that. And I am so, so proud of who you are. And our daughter is too.”

Alex kisses her, then Maggie laughs, “I’m not sure she’s old enough to be proud of me _quite_ yet, babe.”

Alex grins and kisses her again, “She is. She told me.”

“Did she now?”

“Yep. She’s very advanced for her age, you know.”

Maggie laughs and puts her head on Alex’s shoulder, both of them staring at the best thing they’ve every done—who looks so perfect and happy and content right now.

She takes a deep breath, and blinks back her tears, “We’ll figure it out?”

“Always,” Alex promises.

…


End file.
